Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama has stepped up the talk on education. Some education folks thought the day would never come. Speaking at Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts in Thornton, Co. this week, the Illinois senator gave a sweeping speech that was a departure from all the pandering and short-on-specifics education talk we heard earlier in the primaries. It was titled "What’s Possible for Our Children".

Obama described the American public-education system as "morally unacceptable" and talked about making a "truly historic commitment" to improve it. Some of the highlights included his proposals to train more teachers and pay them better, to make college more affordable for those who commit to public service, and to fix the "broken promises" of the No Child Left Behind law. It’s not entirely clear how he plans to pay for some of these proposals. For example, he promised to make community college completely free and offer a $4,000 tax credit to cover two thirds of the tuition at an average public college. He also made this pledge to those who sign up to become teachers: "If you commit your life to teaching, America will commit to paying for your college education."

Check out the full text of the speech. And you can see how Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, responded.

"While in the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama has never spearheaded education reforms, which despite his lofty rhetoric, demonstrates his weak leadership on an issue that is critical to the economic strength of our country. It’s no coincidence that a leading education magazine noted that Senator Obama has made no significant mark on education policy."

"At the event, Obama regurgitated the (inaccurate) slam that NCLB relies on a "a single, high-stakes test…" 

Russo is technically right. Nothing in NCLB requires a single high-stakes test.

But I am not quite as cynical as Russo on Obama’s approach.

 

Most critics of NCLB have either not read the law or choose to distort it for political purposes (I found it amusing that Russo’s next post today touts the musings of Joel Packer*).

 

Obama is simply dealing with Packer’s six years of disingenuous distortions political reality. There seems little hope after six years of efforts by many earnest education reformers to correct the record that anyone, even a Presidential candidate, will be able to do so. Furthermore, even though NCLB allows multiple measures (and the stakes for not meeting AYP are like non-existent) most states have not taken up the law on its offer. So if Obama wants to push states to do what they should already be doing and aren’t and the public thinks they can’t do anyway, I see no reason to lose sleep over whether his statements track the letter of the law.

Regarding curriculum narrowing, our own view, not too dissimilar from Russo’s, has been presented on these pages  previously.

 

But we don’t necessarily see the addition of measures in subjects other than reading, math, and science (all of which NCLB requires now) to be a bad thing, if they are valid and reliable and allow comparisons across school districts. We do worry about the latter point with regard to Obama, because one of his top advisors, Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford, is pushing to allow "local assessments" to count toward adequate yearly progress which would not allow such comparisons (click here for an example). 

More Russo:

"[Obama is] also proposing a national service-type thing that to my eye looks an awful lot like a federal version of TFA.  Just what schools (and school reform) doesn’t need – more FNG short-timers making everyone feel good about high-need schools." 

I saw Obama’s comments more as an attempt to expand on Clinton’s National Service initiatives such as "Americorps" which would not be a bad thing. (Paging Shirley Sagawa). But Russo is right in his observation that if  we keep sticking a disproportionate number of inexperienced teachers, no matter what their their pedigrees, in the lowest performing schools, we are doing those children a great disservice and will likely achieve little lasting systemic change.

 

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Rotherham at Eduwonk weighs in:

as much as I’d like to think that a smart and well-timed education speech from either candidate, or Senator McCain for that matter, would serve as a stirring call to arms for voters and impact the race, it ain’t so….   

We have to agree. Except isn’t McCain one of the "either candidate" he had in mind? Maybe he meant that other race?

 

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The Pack Says "Read My Lips" 

 

*Note to Packer on his promo photo, culled from "Chatterbox" at Slate circa 1999 regarding George W. Bush’s "smirk": 

 

 

"According to Ekman, Friesen, and O’Sullivan, there is a clear distinction between "felt happy" smiles and "masking" smiles intended to hide some other emotion. (The subject doesn’t actually have to be telling a lie; rather, the facial expression itself is the lie.) Felt happy smiles "are defined as the action of the zygomatic major [lip] and orbicularis oculi, pars lateralis [eye] muscles." Masking smiles use a whole bunch of other facial muscles associated with fear, disgust, contempt, sadness, and anger. One such muscle is the triangularis, which pulls the corner of the lip down in an expression that Chatterbox would call … a smirk."

 

We’re just sayin’….