Obama's Education Speech Fired Me Up

Last week in Colorado, Barack Obama gave a truly incisive speech on improving education in America. Here are some highlights (I have added the underlined emphasis to certain passages):

On No Child Left Behind:

"This starts with fixing the broken promises of No Child Left Behind. Now, I believe that the goals of this law were the right ones. Making a promise to educate every child with an excellent teacher is right. Closing the achievement gap that exists in too many cities and rural areas is right. More accountability is right. Higher standards are right.

"But I'll tell you what's wrong with No Child Left Behind. Forcing our teachers, our principals and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong. Promising high-quality teachers in every classroom and then leaving the support and the pay for those teachers behind is wrong. Labeling a school and its students as failures one day and then throwing your hands up and walking away from them the next is wrong.

"We must fix the failures of No Child Left Behind. We must provide the funding we were promised, give our states the resources they need and finally meet our commitment to special education. We also need to realize that we can meet high standards without forcing teachers and students to spend most of the year preparing for a single, high-stakes test. Recently, 87 percent of Colorado teachers said that testing was crowding out subjects like music and art. But we need to look no further than MESA to see that accountability does not need to come at the expense of a well-rounded education. It can help complete it -- and it should.

No Child Left Behind does not explicitly mandate one single high-stakes test, but it measures accountability entirely through testing and thus pushes districts to deify the Test. That's certainly the case in New York. Obama's comments about using assessment to nurture rather than stifle innovation are a breath of fresh air.

On recruiting and retaining quality teachers:

"I'll create a new Service Scholarship program to recruit top talent into the profession and begin by placing these new teachers in overcrowded districts and struggling rural towns, or hard-to-staff subjects like math and science in schools all across the nation. And I will make this pledge as president to all who sign up: If you commit your life to teaching, America will commit to paying for your college education.

"To prepare our teachers, I will create more Teacher Residency Programs to train 30,000 high-quality teachers a year. We know these programs work, and they especially help attract talented individuals who decide to become teachers midway through their careers...

"To support our teachers, we will expand mentoring programs that pair experienced, successful teachers with new recruits -- one of the most effective ways to retain teachers. We'll also make sure that teachers work in conditions which help them and our children succeed. For example, here at MESA [Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts], teachers have scheduled common planning time each week and an extra hour every Tuesday and Thursday for mentoring and tutoring students that need additional help.

"And when our teachers do succeed in making a real difference in our children's lives, I believe it's time we rewarded them for it. I realize that the teachers in Denver are in the middle of tough negotiations right now, but what they've already proven is that it's possible to find new ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on them.

"My plan would provide resources to try these innovative programs in school districts all across America. Under my Career Ladder Initiative, these districts will be able to design programs that reward accomplished educators who serve as mentors to new teachers with the salary increase they deserve. They can reward those who teach in underserved areas or teachers who take on added responsibilities, like you do right here at MESA. And if teachers acquire additional knowledge and skills to serve students better -- if they consistently excel in the classroom -- that work can be valued and rewarded as well."

These ideas--some of which can be credited to the John Edwards campaign-- are good ones. Quality teachers need money, support, and time. Senator Obama addresses all three areas without stepping on the merit-pay-for-test-scores landmine. That's a local issue. I'd like to see Obama embrace Edwards's idea of a national teacher university, a "West Point for teachers," to train educators to work in underserved schools. The popularity of Teach For America among Ivy Leaguers proves that bright people will sign up in droves to teach if it's competitive and prestigious.

On parental responsibility:

"Yes, it takes new resources, but we also know that there is no program and no policy that can substitute for a parent who is involved in their child's education from day one. There is no substitute for a parent who will make sure their children are in school on time and help them with their homework after dinner and attend those parent-teacher conferences, like so many parents here at MESA do. And I have no doubt that we will still be talking about these problems in the next century if we do not have parents who are willing to turn off the TV once in awhile and put away the video games and read to their child. Responsibility for our children's education has to start at home. We have to set high standards for them and spend time with them and love them. We have to hold ourselves accountable."

This is crucial; he went there.

Obama also goes into specifics on making higher education affordable, working to stem the dropout crisis before the high school years, and expanding summer opportunities for at-risk children.

You can read the full text of Senator Obama's smart, comprehensive speech here.

Dan Brown is a teacher and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle.

Follow Dan Brown on Twitter: www.twitter.com/danbrownteacher

Comments

[ccwpmarcus]

NCLB also does little to encourage and nurture the top students. Sure they bring up the class average, but they are going to do that anyway. What happens is the upper and lower rungs are ignored and the ones in the middle, the students that could go either way, are given all the attention all the help.

[FlowerGirl]

I lived in New York for a few years. My son had an excellent teacher one year. He taught mathematics. Usually in that school, the semester's end was devoted to reviewing old Regents' Exams. This teacher refused to do that, used the time to teach more mathematical concepts. As a result, his students did better on the Regents' Exam than any other classes in the school ever had. Unfortunately, he only taught there that one year. But many of his students went on to major in math in college.
One cannot test knowledge into young people; one must give them experience with the concepts. Tests can be useful in determining where a student is, so that the teacher knows how to approach him, and an exam can determine to what extent the concepts have been learned, but the emphasis must be on the experiences the students have with ideas, and stress on tests detracts from that. The teacher mentioned usually had fairly noisy classes, because the kids were excited about the subject and eager to discuss it. They talked about math outside class too! Nobody likes drills, but kids do like to learn and love challenges. They love to play with the concepts. My son wasn't taught to memorize formulas, but to understand how they were derived, what the underlying ideas were, and what their significance was. That is the kind of teaching we need more of.
Drilling and testing produces robots. Exploration and purposeful play produces thinkers.

[OliverTwist]

A fundamental flaw in "no child left behind" is that it calls for improved test scores for the children in our schools and thereby encourages schools to leave students behind who do not test well. High school equivalency anyone?

[customgreen]

I especially like the part regarding parental responsibilities. Lets take away some of the excuses of the school not teaching our kids when we let them play videos as soon as they walk in the door. In my sons school they allow calculators to solve math problems..­...Uh NO! When he gets home he MUST do his math homework the old fashioned way. Pencil and paper. I can't control what happens in school, but when he is home he goes by mom and dad rules.

[Gma11]

One thing I like about so many of Obama's plans is that they bridge individual responsibility and social responsibility. He doesn't dichotomize them as many liberals and conservatives often do.

[TedMn]

I believe that Senator Obama's departure from the NCLB-bashing line might remove him from an NEA/AFT endorsement, yet this puts him in the mainstream. NCLB might be hated by education unions (union positions, not necessarily by union members) but NCLB was and remains the popular response to public interest in education. NCLB was and remains for public education, an attempt to save public education by insistence on academic quality in the face of homeschool and private school opt outs. Opting out of public education is not entirely inspired by right-wing religious pressure, as some claim, but by bottom-line concerns over academic preparation for college--which seem to have been ignored by the trendiest of education experiments inflicted on schools in the 1990s.

[tbone99]

I don't think its popular and even if it is - still wrong. I don't know how many experienced teachers I know who have quit because all professionalism has been removed from their job ( such as knowing what might be the best tactic for individual children) so that they wiill be no more than test technicians.
Some of the best universities are themselves beginnig to abandon reliance on SAT scores as the criteria for admittence. When H.C said she would delete NCLB several people I knew said if there polcies are so close thats a tiebreaker.

Its time for us to admit that NCLB was part of a movement to usher in voucher systems ( ironically who did not have to give tests) break a traditional Dem support system - educators, and to profit people like the Bush family who own testing companies.

[SamThornton]

Great post, Dan. I'm impressed that Sen. Obama is a visionary with the personal skills to make things happen. We don't often have the opportunity to vote for someone like him. Once or twice a century seems to be the norm. On a host of issues, including education, Sen. Obama has the right stuff. We need to make an Obama presidency happen.

[tedbear]

I doubt there has ever been a more urgent time than now to have education at the top of the list of priorities. We are, in large part thanks to the Clintons, now involved in a global competition for jobs with a nation of undereducated people. I believe that Senator Obama will champion that challange.

[burnt]

agree with your assessment­... many Repugs point to Ted Kennedy as a defense and say something to the effect: "He wrote it."

The fact of the matter is that nobody who played a part in writing or sponsoring that legislation had imagined that the CheneyOilCo would see it as a tool for deconstructing public education in an effort to hurry a change to for-profit corporate education funded by the public.

Like the transition of our military to one that largely uses services that are provided by corporations, this administration sought to pave the same path for our educational system. How best to start? Require states implement "No Child Left Behind"... but don't fund it as was designed..­. and punish those who could not meet the requirements.

The result? Well, above all else, it makes corporate run schools look like a great alternative! Post-Katrina NOLA anyone?

[RRonin]

British PM Gordon Brown recently said that the best way to improve our image in the rest of the world is to make education our biggest export. Imagine a world where we are the world's biggest supplier of teachers and educational materials instead of weapons!

[UltraClassic]

Dan, why is it that liberals and leftist democrats think that throwing more money at schools will solve their problems?

Why is is that my uncle attended a 1 room school, learned to read on McGuffey readers and ended up a well known aeronatical engineer?

Why is it that many of our most successful doctors are nationals born over seas and schooled in the most spartan conditions and yet they are very learned and accomplished?

No child left behind was an effort to hold the school's feet to the fire to produce. But liberals and leftist democrats are bought and paid for by the teacher's unions. Let's face it, the unions don't like to be pushed, they never have, they never will.

I'm certain that once Mr. Obama and the liberals take over, we will go back to bad old days of fat administrator staffs and teachers just going through the motions and picking up a paycheck. Public education will once again go unchallanged.

[NoMoFearNoMoHate]

UC, why is it that republicans and conservatives see violence and incarceration will solve their problems?

Why is it that when this fails to work that they then think that throwing more money towards violence and incarceration will solve their problems?

And your claim that "many of our most successful doctors are nationals born over seas and schooled in the most spartan conditions" - support? Or are you just guessing and playing it off as fact?

If it were a fact the key factors involved would seem to be parental guidance and diet - two things that are utterly missing in conservative America. No wonder all of those liberals are wealthy elitists.

Big surprise, another "liberals and leftist democrats" basher who wants us to be afraid of something and doesn't question the most crooked, lying administration ever.

[J E Mugford]

As a parent with two teenagers I have to say "You can't do it soon enough!!!!!!". Students are not being educated today largely because the schools have to focus on test preparation. In my son's school, students get out of class early every Tuesday for "Professional Development" .. I am sorry, but giving classroom time to students is how to improve education, not preparing for a national test. When two weeks out of the school year are spent on standardized testing, which is true here in California, that is two weeks that are lost to education.

Let's face it, President Bush is hardly the poster child for a good education. The fact that this "No Child Left Behind" came from his administration should have been a red flag in the first place. When I heard that the Los Angeles Unified School District has TOLD English instructors NOT to focus on literature, I knew where that came from....

I say to the Congress, "Listen to the next President NOW.!".