Another Look at Obama's Speech on Education

As a teacher in Baltimore that tries very hard to pay close attention to educational policy and its likely influence on my classroom, I can’t shake Obama’s recent speech on education out of my head. He offered lots of action, but in the end, very little positive substance – or perhaps the bad has drowned out the good. So first, the aspects that appear to be on the right side of what Baltimore schools, and schools in general need: support of early childhood, support and funding for National Board Certification, and a substantial increase in funding IDEA Part B (in the stimulus). Obama also vaguely acknowledged the need for better assessments, though his Education Secretary praises the basic model of testing that currently prevails.

The bad: much of his speech reinforced the high stakes, low quality assessments that have become ubiquitous in public education. They provide incomplete and inaccurate information which is used to make important decisions. Everyday I witness the harms of high stakes testing on the children who need our most support. The MSA and other tests like it reduce the educational experiences of children and turn schools into test-prep factories.

Parts of Obama’s speech were factually inaccurate. He stated that the United States had “fallen to 9th” in the world, whereas in reality the U.S. had to make substantial gains to rise to 9th. On the same test in 1995 the United States was ranked 23rd out of 41 countries. Maybe international comparisons are significant benchmarks by which to gauge our success. But this misuse of data rings of the Bush era when misleading scare tactics became common-place in order to promote the administration’s agenda.

Obama also spoke of the merit pay meme, which will likely come to Baltimore in some form sometime soon. People can have reasonable disagreements and ardent debates about merit pay. But one thing is clear, in survey after survey fully certified teachers that leave the profession state that the primary forces driving them out of education were infringements on their creativity and autonomy within the classroom, not low pay. This is not to say that teachers should not be paid more, but rather that merit pay is simply not successful at what it purports to do. Here are the educational historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban: “The history of performance-based salary plans has been a merry-go-round. In the main, districts that initially embraced merit pay dropped it after a brief trial.” More on why merit pay has not historically worked is available here. In short, merit pay would exacerbate the problems that manifest with high stakes testing, leading to an even less-rich educational experience.

Many in education circles that I am a part of poorly formulate the measure by which we should judge Obama’s policies. We need to go beyond just asking ourselves, “Is he better than Bush?” Yet, even by the Bush measure, we have cause to worry.

There's much more to be said about Obama's educational policy initiatives, but this is already too lengthy. Before these policies become reality in Baltimore, we need to take a hard look and go beyond talking about rigor in the classroom. We also need to be rigorous in the evaluation of proposed initiatives. Too much has been discussed and promoted without careful examination. Simply being pro-reform, regardless of the particular reform, will not serve the children of Baltimore.

I will end with quoting one educational pundit Gerald Bracey talking about another: “Diane Ravitch, never once called a bleeding-hear liberal and assistant secretary of education for George H. W. Bush, recently said that, from what she's seen, Obama is a third term for George W. Bush and Arne Duncan is Margaret Spellings in drag. She was not doling out compliments to either man.”