Swift & Change Able

Barack Obama has the most detailed education reform plan of any candidate in the Presidential primaries (click: here). And, more so than any other candidate, he puts the issue of No Child Left Behind front and center.

Obama chooses his words on the topic of education (and there are many) very carefully. His proposals are sweeping, detailed, and nuanced. 

This nuance, along with the more impassioned anti-NCLB statements voiced by his wife Michelle, may be pivotal in determining which direction he would actually take as President. Like Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama has been both an all-purpose campaign surrogate and a harsh critic of NCLB. Unlike Bill Clinton, she has no legislative track record. So it’s harder to know how much what she says is in sync with the views of her husband and his campaign, or how much influence she would exert as First Lady. (But keep reading).

Barack Obama puts forth a long and tough litany of NCLB’s shortcomings. And offers a plethora of proposed changes. But he also keeps his eye on the prize: closing achievement gaps by providing every child with the resources necessary to do so. 

It’s a marked contrast to the unqualified praise for the law coming from the Bush Administration, and the boilerplate demagogic attacks against NCLB most often uttered on the campaign trail by Democrats. 

He starts up front by saying that his intent is to "reform NCLB". He sharply criticizes the law but also at the same time signals a willingness to embrace its overarching purpose:   

"The goal of the law was the right one, but unfulfilled funding promises, inadequate implementation by the Education Department and shortcomings in the design of the law itself have limited its effectiveness and undercut its support. As a result, the law has failed to provide high-quality teachers in every classroom and failed to adequately support and pay those teachers."

Barack then goes on to give a detailed list of reforms that would "fix" what he sees to be wrong with the law and institute new reforms that go outside the NCLB box.

In the former category are proposals that he shares with his Democratic rivals (including Hillary Clinton):

• Improving assessments;

• Instituting growth models for measuring student progress (i.e., measuring continuous improvement in student achievement rather than static snapshots of annual changes); and,

       • Providing both more resources and an elaborate policy framework for the professional development of teachers and administrators.

One of his most innovative and thoughtful proposals is to: 

"Improve the education of middle school students in low-performing schools by: 

• Requiring states to develop a detailed plan to improve middle school student achievement [and]  

• Developing and utilizing early identification data systems to identify those students most at-risk of dropping out." 

This is in keeping with one of the key federal roles of outlining the accountability systems that states and school districts must use to measure whether or not they are actually improving education for historically under-served students. It would be a quantum leap from most existing state data systems, one built on a wide body research that shows it is in middle school where drop out risks originate, rather than 11th or 12th grade.

We can’t do anything approximating justice to Obama’s proposals on teacher pay and training in the short space here. But his approach is both comprehensive and aggressive. The most potentially effective and controversial component, however, is "compensation systems [that] can provide salary incentives for demonstrated knowledge, skill and expertise." Teacher quality is the single-most important factor in student achievement and represents one of the widest gaps in resources available to under-served groups. But the national teachers unions have vigorously opposed any form of differential compensation at the federal level. 

So the wonk factor of the Obama proposal is high. But a campaign is much more than policy wonkishness.  The $64,000 (or is it $14 million?) question is where Obama’s policy proposals fit in the context of his campaign’s rhetoric. And the starkest question here is this: How do Obama’s broad themes of "transparency" and inclusive policy-making, and his specific proposals for NCLB, square with the more atmospheric statements of his campaign, most notably those of his wife Michelle when she says things like this:

"NCLB is sucking the life out of our teachers, our children are being tested to death…"

I’m sure she meant this figuratively. And it’s a good bet that this hyperbole is driven in large part by the high-decibel level being emitted by the most dominant primary voice in the primaries, that of the teachers’ unions. Still, what’s the take home message?

Closing achievement gaps is not easy. There’s a lot of pain, strain, and mental anguish out there, no doubt about it. If winning the education reform battle were easy, it would have been done 50 years ago. But if Barack Obama’s policies were implemented, there’d necessarily be more to come. This issue, like few others, requires perseverance and strong political will. If one wants kumbaya between the education establishment and elected officials, we can go back to the 1990’s. Would Obama blink when staring down this challenge as President? Or march forward in office just as he is currently doing on the campaign trail? Time may tell.