Obama’s Plan for Education Reform: Bash Bush … Then Adopt His Policies
Does President Obama really care about improving the nation’s public schools as much as he claims? Apparently, the answer depends on whether he can find a way to get credit for any improvement. How else can one explain Obama’s muddled approach to education reform and his back-and-forth on accountability and maintaining national standards?
It’s not that I believe Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan aren’t sincere in their desire to hold schools accountable for student performance. Whether they’re talking about reforming teachers colleges or making sure that schools provide all students with a quality education, they say all the right things. And the administration’s Race to the Top initiative has real potential to revolutionize how we evaluate teachers. Allotted $4.3 billion in stimulus funds, Duncan decided to use the cash to try to pressure states and school districts to increase accountability, foster innovation in the classroom, administer regular tests and collect data on student performance, improve academic achievement, and turn around failing schools.
In other words, just about everything that Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, set out to do with his signature education reform law — No Child Left Behind. This being the case, you would think that Obama and his administration would be delighted to find so much of the accountability apparatus already in place. In fact, you might think that they would even try to incorporate some of Bush’s ideas into their reform plan going forward.
But sharing credit requires something that Obama seems to have in short supply: humility. Besides, during the presidential campaign, in an effort to get support from teachers’ unions, Obama frequently blasted NCLB. That could make it difficult for him to now reverse course and acknowledge the law’s attributes.
So, unable to get beyond partisanship and his own ego, Obama has instead gone in the other direction and tried to water down NCLB. It seems that he intends to replace the law with his version of education reform. Recently, administration officials announced that they intend to conduct an extensive rewrite of NCLB. One of the first items to be replaced is the law’s controversial and much-criticized provision for rating schools based on student test scores.
Is this about Obama’s Pajamas?
Is this an interlude to your next amnesty post?
As with the so called war on terror, Bush was all about speechifying and lying, and not so much in actually getting anything done right.
Neither Bush, nor Obama, nor the elites ,give a damn about the growing crisis of ignorance and intellectual retardation that characterizes the oxymoron that is american education.They are both the stooges of a plutocracy, who were hired to simulate compassion, and promote ignorance.an educated population is a danger to the plutocracy;therefore, Obama will continue Bush’s failed educational policies.
#3 BC Your rancid spewings prove my case about the type of graduates our school turn out:intellectually dishonest,fanatically statist,supporters of failed economic policies,and lickspittlers for pandering would be dictators (Obama).
To deguello: is that what the ultra-right is calling verifiable information these days — “rancid spewings”? So do you guys call, say, sparrows “tiny, annoying flying dogs” as well? I bet you call chocolate ice cream something like “failed vanilla” or such.
I am strongly in favor of abandoning the slogan of “No Child Left Behind” to the slogan “Every Child Above Average”.
Hey BC,
Is that why we weren’t attacked after 9/11? Or why we won the unwinnable war in Iraq? The Bush speechifying? If so, maybe The Chicago Messiah needs to start speechifying – cause so far his record on getting things “done right” has not been worth a tinker’s damn.
#6 BC :We in the “ultra right wing” aren’t much concerned with sparrows;however,we find rancid, marxoid trolling buzzards,positively and hysterically funny.Keep it up,and keep it rancid.As for “verifiable information”, you mean like Obama’s death care bill, that his hag Pelosi claimed we wouln’t know about until it became law? Like I said,hysterical-and rancid!
To Tex Taylor: yeah, let’s not count 9/11 and any could’ve, should’ves before then, as well as that little distraction from the real war on terror, and just look at his record after that. Gawd….
To deguello: “marxoid trolling buzzards”? Hmmm….let me guess….that’s what you guys call kites, ain’t it? Do you also call hamburgers “carcass infected rolls”?
BC of Selective Memory,
Good Lawd!
Oh yeah…the real war on terror. All those choir boys that suddenly converted to jihad and ran for the sands of Iraq on account of Bush. Right? Or the first attack on the WTC? Or the the Khobar Towers, or USS Cole, and…and…and.
However, while we may be dissing our allies in Europe and elsewhere, look at all the new friends we’ve made: Hugo, Fidel, Mahmoud!
To Tex Taylor: The people behind the 1993 WTC attack were caught, and overall Clinton did a laughably better job than Bush on this front than Bush did, despite the usual right wing BS to the contrary. As far as Iraq goes, if there was any real justice in the world, Bush and his buds should have gotten the same treatment as Hussein got: intel showed clearly from pre-day 1 that the only al-Qaeda-connected “terrorist” activity technically in Iraq involved a small, radical, very anti-Hussein Kurdish group in a section of Kurdish-controlled territory that bordered Iran. That was twisted into one of the main invasion excuses that ended up causing massive amounts of destruction and countless civilian deaths in Iraq, which — just as a reminder — had nothing friggin to do with 9/11 despite what most of the public and even more of the soldiers fighting there thought.