From the Inquirer.
Editorial: Obama's Plan
Fixing the schools
Posted on Fri, Mar. 13, 2009
President Obama may have the right lesson plan to finally fix the country's failing schools. In his first major speech on education, Obama fulfilled a campaign pledge to initiate a long-overdue overhaul of the public education system.
The president put all stakeholders on notice that he plans to make sweeping changes at every level, from kindergarten to college.
In his boldest moves, Obama wants to link teachers' pay to student performance and expand the number of charter schools. Those issues go to the heart of what is wrong with the public education system: Too many schools are straddled with bad teachers and too many students with no other choice are stuck in failing schools.
His positions on merit pay and charters put Obama at odds with many in the Democratic Party and with one of its most powerful constituents, the teachers unions, which have cautiously endorsed the plan, for now.
The plan announced Tuesday offered few specifics on what performance pay would mean for teachers. It should mean rewarding the best teachers with more money when they improve student achievement.
Republicans will like Obama's support for more charters but are likely to oppose spending $5 billion to expand early childhood education, even though preschool and kindergarten have yielded proven results.
Obama is on point in calling for states to lift rules that limit the number of charter schools. Philadelphia's experience, with some charters being investigated for mismanagement and misspending, shows oversight is critical. But charters do offer students a viable alternative when regular schools are sorry.
Obama's education speech didn't sit well with critics who say he should focus solely on trying to jump-start the recession economy. But the president is right to not put off an education agenda that is less about politics and more about doing what is best for students.
Public schools will get about $100 billion in new funding under the economic-stimulus package. Obama's education plan stresses accountability and urges states to set more rigorous, uniform academic standards.
The president also suggested longer school days and an extended school year. That would bring the United States in line with Asian countries, where students are performing better academically.
In making his remarks at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Obama acknowledged the obstacles facing Latino students, who have a 50-percent dropout rate in most cities, including Philadelphia. Black students are leaving school prematurely at a similar alarming rate.
Obama must still deal with the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law, which was not addressed in his speech. The law should either be reauthorized with some changes, including adequate funding, or replaced with another measure that similarly holds schools accountable and requires states to test students annually in language arts and math.
Even in difficult economic times, public education must be a top priority. It's good to see Obama knows that.
Showing posts with label federal education policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label federal education policy. Show all posts
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Obama Calls for Overhaul of Education System
From the New York Times
Obama Calls for Overhaul of Education System
Article Tools Sponsored By
By DAVID STOUT and JEFF ZELENY
Published: March 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama called for sweeping changes in American education on Tuesday, urging states to lift limits on charter schools and exhorting teachers, parents and students to embrace a renewed commitment to learning from grade school through adulthood.
The president said it was time to erase limits on the number of charter schools, which his administration refers to as “laboratories of innovation,” while closing those that are not working. Teachers’ unions oppose the schools, saying they take away funding for public schools.
“I call on states to reform their charter rules, and lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools, wherever such caps are in place,” the president said, in his first major speech on education since he took office seven weeks ago. Caps now exist in 26 states and the District of Columbia, he said.
Putting limits on charter schools, even in places where they are performing well, “isn’t good for our children, our economy or our country,” the president said. He said recently in his budget message that he hoped to double financing for charter schools eventually, and that the Department of Education would help create “new, high-quality charter schools” while supporting the closing of those guilty of “chronic underperformance.”
Mr. Obama’s promotion of charter schools was virtually certain to be greeted with skepticism, at best, from teacher unions, as was his call for a system of merit pay for good teachers, which the president said would mean “treating teachers like the professionals they are, while also holding them more accountable.”
“New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones,” the president said, in an address to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here. “Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools.”
Teacher union leaders reacted cautiously. Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, said his union’s 3.2 million members “welcome the vision” laid out by the president and look forward to working with him and Education Secretary Arne Duncan “to transform public education to prepare students to compete in a global economy.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, said her union embraced “the goals and aspirations” outlined by President Obama. “As with any public policy, the devil is in the details, and it is important that teachers’ voices are heard as we implement the president’s vision,” Ms. Weingarten said.
In his address, the president said the United States’ prosperity, security and even the American dream itself are at risk unless the country reverses years of decline and restores its education system to pre-eminence. “Let there be no doubt,” Mr. Obama said. “The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens — and my fellow Americans, we have everything we need to be that nation.”
“It is time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career,” Mr. Obama said. “We have accepted failure for too long — enough. America’s entire education system must once more be the envy of the world.”
In promoting a merit-based system of pay for teachers, which unions generally dislike because they say it could foster favoritism, the president was following through on positions he took during his campaign — and implicitly laying down a challenge to unions, traditionally reliable supporters of Democratic candidates.
The president said too many people in his party have resisted the idea of “rewarding excellence” with extra pay, while too many Republicans have opposed spending money on early education “despite compelling evidence of its importance.”
“The time for finger-pointing is over. The time for holding ourselves accountable is here,” Mr. Obama said. “What’s required is not simply new investments, but new reforms. It is time to expect more from our students.”
While the overwhelming number of teachers are “doing an outstanding job under difficult circumstances,” states and school districts should be able “to move bad teachers out of the classroom,” the president said.
While teacher unions have generally resisted merit-pay programs, there have been some successful experiments with them across the country, especially in districts where unions are involved from the beginning in developing them.
The address on Tuesday was the first step in laying out the president’s agenda to improve American schools, officials said, with more specifics to be outlined to Congress in the coming weeks. The president noted that the recently enacted stimulus package calls for spending some $5 billion on the Early Head Start and Head Start programs — an investment that he said would be rewarded by lower welfare rolls, fewer health care costs and less crime, as well as better classroom performance.
Mr. Obama set a goal of the United States having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. Nothing less than that will suffice in the 21st Century, when Americans are competing in a world made ever smaller by the Internet, the president said.
The president said the Education Department “will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars. It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative but whether it works.”
Charter school proponents were elated by the president’s speech. “With 365,000 students on charter waiting lists, there is no excuse for state laws that stifle the growth of these schools,” Nelson Smith, the president and chief executive of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said in a statement.
The president said new approaches to education should extend to the traditional school day and the school calendar, both of which should be longer. “We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land,” he said.
Obama Calls for Overhaul of Education System
Article Tools Sponsored By
By DAVID STOUT and JEFF ZELENY
Published: March 10, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama called for sweeping changes in American education on Tuesday, urging states to lift limits on charter schools and exhorting teachers, parents and students to embrace a renewed commitment to learning from grade school through adulthood.
The president said it was time to erase limits on the number of charter schools, which his administration refers to as “laboratories of innovation,” while closing those that are not working. Teachers’ unions oppose the schools, saying they take away funding for public schools.
“I call on states to reform their charter rules, and lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools, wherever such caps are in place,” the president said, in his first major speech on education since he took office seven weeks ago. Caps now exist in 26 states and the District of Columbia, he said.
Putting limits on charter schools, even in places where they are performing well, “isn’t good for our children, our economy or our country,” the president said. He said recently in his budget message that he hoped to double financing for charter schools eventually, and that the Department of Education would help create “new, high-quality charter schools” while supporting the closing of those guilty of “chronic underperformance.”
Mr. Obama’s promotion of charter schools was virtually certain to be greeted with skepticism, at best, from teacher unions, as was his call for a system of merit pay for good teachers, which the president said would mean “treating teachers like the professionals they are, while also holding them more accountable.”
“New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones,” the president said, in an address to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here. “Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools.”
Teacher union leaders reacted cautiously. Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, said his union’s 3.2 million members “welcome the vision” laid out by the president and look forward to working with him and Education Secretary Arne Duncan “to transform public education to prepare students to compete in a global economy.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, said her union embraced “the goals and aspirations” outlined by President Obama. “As with any public policy, the devil is in the details, and it is important that teachers’ voices are heard as we implement the president’s vision,” Ms. Weingarten said.
In his address, the president said the United States’ prosperity, security and even the American dream itself are at risk unless the country reverses years of decline and restores its education system to pre-eminence. “Let there be no doubt,” Mr. Obama said. “The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens — and my fellow Americans, we have everything we need to be that nation.”
“It is time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career,” Mr. Obama said. “We have accepted failure for too long — enough. America’s entire education system must once more be the envy of the world.”
In promoting a merit-based system of pay for teachers, which unions generally dislike because they say it could foster favoritism, the president was following through on positions he took during his campaign — and implicitly laying down a challenge to unions, traditionally reliable supporters of Democratic candidates.
The president said too many people in his party have resisted the idea of “rewarding excellence” with extra pay, while too many Republicans have opposed spending money on early education “despite compelling evidence of its importance.”
“The time for finger-pointing is over. The time for holding ourselves accountable is here,” Mr. Obama said. “What’s required is not simply new investments, but new reforms. It is time to expect more from our students.”
While the overwhelming number of teachers are “doing an outstanding job under difficult circumstances,” states and school districts should be able “to move bad teachers out of the classroom,” the president said.
While teacher unions have generally resisted merit-pay programs, there have been some successful experiments with them across the country, especially in districts where unions are involved from the beginning in developing them.
The address on Tuesday was the first step in laying out the president’s agenda to improve American schools, officials said, with more specifics to be outlined to Congress in the coming weeks. The president noted that the recently enacted stimulus package calls for spending some $5 billion on the Early Head Start and Head Start programs — an investment that he said would be rewarded by lower welfare rolls, fewer health care costs and less crime, as well as better classroom performance.
Mr. Obama set a goal of the United States having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. Nothing less than that will suffice in the 21st Century, when Americans are competing in a world made ever smaller by the Internet, the president said.
The president said the Education Department “will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars. It’s not whether an idea is liberal or conservative but whether it works.”
Charter school proponents were elated by the president’s speech. “With 365,000 students on charter waiting lists, there is no excuse for state laws that stifle the growth of these schools,” Nelson Smith, the president and chief executive of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said in a statement.
The president said new approaches to education should extend to the traditional school day and the school calendar, both of which should be longer. “We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land,” he said.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Education chief favors longer school year
From CNN.com
Education chief favors longer school year
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Those lazy days of summer may become a thing of the past if the new secretary of education has his way.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan suggests giving incentives to teachers whose students perform well.
Arne Duncan, the Cabinet secretary charged with overhauling America's educational system, is studying programs that keep kids in school longer to boost their academic achievements.
"When I go out and talk about that, that doesn't always make me popular with students. They like the long summers," Duncan said in an interview Wednesday with CNN conducted in the Education Department's library.
But Duncan said American students are "at a competitive disadvantage" because the United States has shorter school years than other countries such as India and China.
"It doesn't matter how poor, how tough the family background, socioeconomic challenges," Duncan said. "Where students have longer days, longer weeks, longer years -- that's making a difference."
More time in school is one of several ideas under consideration as Duncan settles into his new role.
The lanky former college basketball player and father of two speaks quickly, with remarkable energy in the face of daunting challenges.
Thirty percent of high school students drop out before graduation, and another 50 percent won't finish college, according to Education Sector, a nonprofit think tank.
For Latino and African-American students, the numbers are more dramatic. About half of them will graduate from high school, the Washington-based group said.
As school administrators struggle with dropout rates, they also are confronting drastic budget cuts amid national economic uncertainty. Districts are slashing jobs and putting off plans to repair crumbling school buildings.
"What's going on, state after state, due to this tough economy, is devastating educationally. And we can't afford to get worse now. We have to get dramatically better," said Duncan, former chief of Chicago Public Schools.
President Obama and lawmakers have directed billions of dollars to the Department of Education through the stimulus package, and they propose to send more in the 2010 budget Obama announced Thursday.
Duncan said some of that money will provide schools with immediate relief to keep teachers.
"Thanks to the stimulus package, we have the chance to save literally hundreds of thousands of teacher positions. This is a huge, huge deal," he said, citing a University of Washington study that suggests 600,000 teachers could be lost this year without drastic intervention.
"We're going to be able to avert maybe not all of those cuts but a huge percentage of those, and that's very very important," he said.
But the new funds may be only enough to keep a crisis at bay, said Kevin Carey of Education Sector. State and local shortages are forcing schools to make do with much less.
"The economic situation is hurting school budgets," Carey said. "The stimulus package that just passed will help that somewhat, but there still isn't a whole lot of new money to pay teachers more, reduce class sizes, reduce high school dropout rates."
Duncan also suggested giving incentives to teachers whose students perform well, an unpopular idea with teachers' unions. And he said school systems may need to make tough decisions about teachers who don't perform at par.
"If teachers aren't making it, we want to support them and help them develop, but ultimately if it's not working, our children deserve the best," Duncan said. "They probably need to find something else to do."
Duncan also is pushing for new benchmarks that would use international standards to compare American students with those overseas.
He faults No Child Left Behind for standards that he said don't accurately monitor some children's progress.
"When you're told you're meeting those standards, you think you're doing OK. You're really not," Duncan said.
"Our children are not competing for jobs down the block or in the district or in the state -- they're competing against children in India or China, and they need to know how they stack up."
Carey said Duncan's efforts to meet Obama's education goals are an immensely complicated task.
"There are 50 states, there are 14,000 school districts, 90,000 schools, and Secretary Duncan is responsible for every one of them. But they all have their own ideas, their own funding sources, their own local leadership," Carey said.
Duncan said he feels "a real sense of urgency" to implement national education reform.
"Our children in this country have one chance at education. One chance. We can't wait. We can't wait seven or eight years. We'll lose a generation of kids," Duncan said. "And so we have to get better; we have to get better now."
Education chief favors longer school year
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Those lazy days of summer may become a thing of the past if the new secretary of education has his way.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan suggests giving incentives to teachers whose students perform well.
Arne Duncan, the Cabinet secretary charged with overhauling America's educational system, is studying programs that keep kids in school longer to boost their academic achievements.
"When I go out and talk about that, that doesn't always make me popular with students. They like the long summers," Duncan said in an interview Wednesday with CNN conducted in the Education Department's library.
But Duncan said American students are "at a competitive disadvantage" because the United States has shorter school years than other countries such as India and China.
"It doesn't matter how poor, how tough the family background, socioeconomic challenges," Duncan said. "Where students have longer days, longer weeks, longer years -- that's making a difference."
More time in school is one of several ideas under consideration as Duncan settles into his new role.
The lanky former college basketball player and father of two speaks quickly, with remarkable energy in the face of daunting challenges.
Thirty percent of high school students drop out before graduation, and another 50 percent won't finish college, according to Education Sector, a nonprofit think tank.
For Latino and African-American students, the numbers are more dramatic. About half of them will graduate from high school, the Washington-based group said.
As school administrators struggle with dropout rates, they also are confronting drastic budget cuts amid national economic uncertainty. Districts are slashing jobs and putting off plans to repair crumbling school buildings.
"What's going on, state after state, due to this tough economy, is devastating educationally. And we can't afford to get worse now. We have to get dramatically better," said Duncan, former chief of Chicago Public Schools.
President Obama and lawmakers have directed billions of dollars to the Department of Education through the stimulus package, and they propose to send more in the 2010 budget Obama announced Thursday.
Duncan said some of that money will provide schools with immediate relief to keep teachers.
"Thanks to the stimulus package, we have the chance to save literally hundreds of thousands of teacher positions. This is a huge, huge deal," he said, citing a University of Washington study that suggests 600,000 teachers could be lost this year without drastic intervention.
"We're going to be able to avert maybe not all of those cuts but a huge percentage of those, and that's very very important," he said.
But the new funds may be only enough to keep a crisis at bay, said Kevin Carey of Education Sector. State and local shortages are forcing schools to make do with much less.
"The economic situation is hurting school budgets," Carey said. "The stimulus package that just passed will help that somewhat, but there still isn't a whole lot of new money to pay teachers more, reduce class sizes, reduce high school dropout rates."
Duncan also suggested giving incentives to teachers whose students perform well, an unpopular idea with teachers' unions. And he said school systems may need to make tough decisions about teachers who don't perform at par.
"If teachers aren't making it, we want to support them and help them develop, but ultimately if it's not working, our children deserve the best," Duncan said. "They probably need to find something else to do."
Duncan also is pushing for new benchmarks that would use international standards to compare American students with those overseas.
He faults No Child Left Behind for standards that he said don't accurately monitor some children's progress.
"When you're told you're meeting those standards, you think you're doing OK. You're really not," Duncan said.
"Our children are not competing for jobs down the block or in the district or in the state -- they're competing against children in India or China, and they need to know how they stack up."
Carey said Duncan's efforts to meet Obama's education goals are an immensely complicated task.
"There are 50 states, there are 14,000 school districts, 90,000 schools, and Secretary Duncan is responsible for every one of them. But they all have their own ideas, their own funding sources, their own local leadership," Carey said.
Duncan said he feels "a real sense of urgency" to implement national education reform.
"Our children in this country have one chance at education. One chance. We can't wait. We can't wait seven or eight years. We'll lose a generation of kids," Duncan said. "And so we have to get better; we have to get better now."
Monday, August 25, 2008
Education Policy: Obama and McCain
Barack Obama and John McCain will be opening up the 2008 installment of the quadrennial presidential follies shortly, and we will be treated to the spectacle of media frenzy over substance-less discussion, but education policy will be on the mind of the 44th President of the United States.
The Council for Exceptional Children has created a voter guide (pdf) that lists the education platforms of the presidential candidates.
EdWeek.org has a Campaign K-12 blog available to keep up to date.
The Council for Exceptional Children has created a voter guide (pdf) that lists the education platforms of the presidential candidates.
EdWeek.org has a Campaign K-12 blog available to keep up to date.
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