The following is the second profile in a series of postings about where the Republican candidates for president stand on education issues:

Ron Paul doesn’t talk around the subject of education.

"The federal government does not own our children," the presidential candidate says on his Web site. "Yet we act as if it does by letting it decide when, how, and what our children will learn. We have turned their futures over to lobbyists and bureaucrats."

Paul, a congressman from Texas, is libertarian at heart — and has quite a following, known as the Ron Paul Revolution. Education — and the freedom to learn outside the control of government — is perhaps one of Paul’s biggest platforms.

He often points out, correctly, that the U.S. Constitution gives the federal government no "authority to fund or control schools." If elected president, Ron Paul has promised to abolish the U.S. Department of Education.

As a congressman, Ron Paul has:

• Supported vouchers by introducing a bill, the Family Education Freedom Act (H.R. 1056), that would give families a $5,000 tax credit to attend private, parochial or home school.

• Has sponsored H.R. 1059, a bill designed to give full-time elementary and secondary teachers a $3,000 yearly tax credit to encourage them to stay in the "underpaid profession" and help pay off student loans and continuing education, which is often required by the same Department of Education bureaucrats he wants to send to the unemployment line.

Paul calls the No Child Left Behind Act the "No Bureaucrat Left Behind" law.