President Obama’s Weekly Address: Getting Serious About Education Reform

[cal04]

Source: ABC News

In his weekly address, President Obama highlighted the economic need to reform America’s failing education system, saying, “If we’re serious about building an economy that lasts – an economy in which hard work pays off with the opportunity for solid middle class jobs – we had better be serious about education.”

Obama said that passing his $447 billion jobs bill and reforming the Bush-era “No Child Left Behind” education law will allow the U.S. to educate its way to a better economy.

“It is time to put our teachers back on the job,” he said. “It is time to rebuild and modernize our schools. And it is time to raise our standards, up our game, and do everything it takes to prepare our children succeed in the global economy. Now is the time to once again make our education system the envy of the world.”‘

(snip)
“While the goals behind No Child Left Behind were admirable, experience has taught us that the law has some serious flaws that are hurting our children instead of helping them,” he said. “Teachers are being forced to teach to a test, while subjects like history and science are being squeezed out. And in order to avoid having their schools labeled as failures, some states lowered their standards in a race to the bottom.”


Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/obamas-weekly-address-getting-serious-about-education-reform/

[BiggJawn]

1. Yeah, get serious, fire Anre Duncan... n/t

[Le Taz Hot]

2. +1

Arne Duncan -- doing for U.S. schools what he did for the schools in Chicago -- sent it into an academic nosedive.

[No Elephants]

8. Every now and again, the first post on a thread is the thread winner, no matter

how long the thread gets.

I have a feeling this is one of those times.

[BiggJawn]

14. But I should learn how to spell "Arne"... n/t

[No Elephants]

15. I didn't even notice, but everyone knew who you meant. Only a pisant would make a deal out of it.

IMO, of course.

[yurbud]

18. that would go a long way toward restoring the trust of progressives

[judesedit]

3. You have to clean house first or you will get nowhere. The GOP/corporations want us dumb as dirt

How else can they continue their destruction of this country? Thank you very much.

[zalinda]

4. As soon as he gets rid of Arne, I'll believe him n/t

[webDude]

6. Amen! Quit getting rid of public education! Get the Billionaire's club out of...

...the mix, no more going with their agenda!

[Jakes Progress]

10. Don't believe.

This has all the earmarks of an arne operation. You get out of NCLB when you write a plan that pleases arne. He stole this idea from bush. Under george, we always got extra tax money if we adopted programs from the corporations that backed the right. Education and learning had nothing to do with it.

[sulphurdunn]

5. Obama

is in campaign mode. That means he'll talk the progressive talk again. But will he walk the progressive walk this time? :shrug:

[No Elephants]

7. I assume that is a rhetorical question.

[sulphurdunn]

12. Hope springs eternal.

Hope is the handmaiden of deception.

[Jakes Progress]

9. Been there before.

All schools have to do is write a plan that arne will approve. Back a few years ago, districts in Texas had a ton of money offered to them if they wrote a successful proposal for it. Shortly it became obvious that the only "successful" plans would use only a certain program, a corporate whore program that was guaranteed to degrade children's ability to read and think. But it would make a boatload of cash for some companies that supported bush. This was a way to bypass all those silly professionals who really knew what to do. Superintendents were ordering reading directors to write a proposal for the crappy program so that the district could get all that money. Of course the money was tax payer's money and the whole scheme was meant to get around the usual adoption process and deliver the tax money directly to the corporate interests.

Want to make a bet that "successful" proposals here will be ones that incorporate private schools, "charter" schools, and TFA crap?

[jefferson_dem]

11. POTUS is right.

Thanks for posting.

Video and transcript here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/09/24/weekly-address-strengthening-american-education-system

[Edweird]

13. Um, attacking union jobs will somehow help bring back 'middle class' income? Srsly?

That's sick.

[iemitsu]

16. i am not a young man and i can tell you

that no president, including W has been worse for public educators.
as usual, obama sounds nice but i wouldn't trust him on this issue for anything.

[iemitsu]

17. obama has no choice but to back off on no child left behind.

according to that scheme, by 2014, 100% of public schools will be failing. this was, of course, the bush plan. the solution was to privatize all the schools to solve that problem.
now as we near that goal it is becoming too obvious to everyone that the NCLB criteria is flawed, since most americans don't identify the schools their own children attend as failures.
also many american public schools do an excellent job educating students.
as everyone knows, it is income inequality that makes the most difference in school success.
if we want education to be a priority and american school children to be competitive we need to redistribute income so that more of us feel enfranchised.
this does not sound like a job that obama is willing to embrace.
until then his words ring hollow.
as one can tell from the article, obama still thinks that the problem is low standards.
what an ass? i teach high school and i can assure you that this generation of students is expected to produce much more work (and with more scholarly approach) than i ever was at the college-prep, public high school i attended in the early 1970s (by the way i graduated before the sat scores began to plummet).
i am so sick of teachers and students, and others with no power being blamed for what are policy failures. maybe our elected officials ought to look at their own educations, and higher-level thinking skills (or lack there-of) for the source of our problems.