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.

Another thing that is probably also on the way out is the deadline of 2014, by which schools are supposed to bring all students to grade level in math and reading. Duncan considers that goal unrealistic. But he has said in the past that no decision has been made about whether to abandon it.

Given that, it was quite a surprise to see the White House reverse course again and gravitate back to the idea of establishing a set of national standards. The administration wants to require states to adopt those standards if they want to qualify for federal funds intended to help impoverished students under Title I. What the White House has in mind — and what it recommends that Congress include in its overhaul of NCLB — is a requirement that states adopt “college- and career-ready standards” in reading and math.

Honestly, this approach doesn’t represent much of a change from current law. NCLB also requires states to adopt “challenging academic standards” in reading and math in order to qualify for funds under Title I, although it lets states define “challenging.”

You see how this works? To satisfy supporters on the left who are anti-reform and would just as soon defend the status quo, the Obama administration wants to advance the perception that it is somehow radically changing education policy and reversing everything that the Bush administration did in that regard. And then, when no is looking, it quietly goes back and adopts much the same policies.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this two-step. Obama is doing the same thing with the war on terror. He makes a show of opposing the Bush policies — on detainees, domestic wiretaps, housing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay without trial, the rendition of suspects to foreign countries for rough interrogation, etc. And then, quietly, he adopts them all one by one.

Wouldn’t it be easier for Obama to just be honest and admit that his predecessor had a good idea every now and then, rather than flip back and forth between being a critic of the Bush administration and one of its greatest fans?