An advocacy group backed by two of the nation's biggest philanthropies visited Oakland yesterday as part of a cross-country bid to focus the presidential candidates' attention on education issues.

Strong American Schools, a Washington, D.C.-based group funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, wants the candidates to embrace its call for American education standards, more effective teachers and longer school hours.

The group calls its campaign "ED in '08." Strong American Schools has deployed field representatives to battleground states in the presidential race, hoping to cultivate voters' support for the agenda.

The group has held public events, conducted advertising blitzes and pressed its case privately with the candidates' policy gurus.

Iraq, the economy and the environment may be the issues most often mentioned on the hustings. But "education underlies them," Strong American Schools Chairman and former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer said in a telephone interview yesterday.

At a public forum at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, Strong American Schools representatives showed a documentary that contrasted American students' laid-back approach to high school with the seriousness of students in China and India.

An Indian student attended a 7 a.m. Saturday math tutoring session, and a Chinese student endured a nine-hour school day. Both talked about the pressure of getting into a good university.

In comparison, an American student said she liked to "kick back and have fun." Another American senior said he didn't want to be a cubicle-dweller but seemed to have no defined college or career plans.

The film offered sobering statistics. It said only 40 percent of U.S. high school students take any science more challenging than general biology and only 55 percent any math more rigorous than algebra II and geometry.

Strong American Schools invited Pittsburgh school board President Bill Isler and Derrick Lopez, the Pittsburgh Public Schools' chief of high school reform, to assess the film. They said the portrayal was accurate -- up to a point.

"I see a lot of very, very driven students," Mr. Isler said. "It's not either/or. It's how do we get everybody to be driven?"

With other nations outperforming the United States in key academic areas, Americans should take an immediate interest, according to Strong American Schools.

Besides three terms as Colorado governor, Mr. Romer was superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District and general chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He stressed that Strong American Schools is a nonpartisan group that doesn't rank or endorse candidates.

Mr. Romer said Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain have embraced the group's proposals in varying degrees. He said the candidates' comments have been more vague and the discussion less extensive than he would like.

"I think there will be more thorough discussion of education as the campaign develops," he said.

The Gates and Broad foundations have provided hundreds of millions of dollars for public schools nationwide.

A handful of the Pittsburgh district's top administrators, including Superintendent Mark Roosevelt, are graduates of Broad's training academy for urban school leaders. The foundation also has provided $1.8 million for Pittsburgh's new principal training program.

The Strong American Schools agenda reflects some of Mr. Broad's long-championed ideas, including financial incentives for teachers.

Strong American Schools wants to pay teachers more for contributing to "superior" student achievement and accepting particularly tough assignments.

Mr. Romer said establishing American education standards wouldn't necessarily involve a congressional mandate. Rather, he said the president could ask a group of states to formulate standards that could be accepted on a voluntary basis nationwide.