Obama's Good Education Intentions Paving a Road to Hell?

by Clay Burell · 2009-03-12 10:09:00 UTC
Topics:

Arne Duncan

Occasional contributor Jennifer Parker left this comment to my post about how Obama's citation of Korean education as a model to emulate was misguided at best, and it nails my own misgivings about Obama's education goals:

As someone who campaigned hard for President Obama, it saddens me that he does not have a well-informed understanding of our public education system and the systems in other countries. I remember well when I first realized it, but I thought 'he is so bright and so receptive to learning about all issues that we can get his ear and make progress'. Then he selected Arne Duncan.

I believe that with Obama we see a 'typical' American: one who believes in having a public education system for all students and strongly wants it to be a quality system, but just doesn't have a clue about how to achieve this. And with all the more pressing crises he has to deal with, is leaving it up to others who at this time have quick fixes and big-business agendas.

Another regular contributor, Jessica Shiller, articulated another, more hopeful, thought about Obama's plans with this comment in the same post - and I hope it's true:

His speech seemed aimed at conservative Democrats, business leaders, and Republicans, not educators, parents or kids. He wants to show that he will be tough on school accountability much in the same way previous presidents thought they needed to be tough on crime. In addition to extended day, his proposal for more charters, closing failing schools, and merit pay were all very exciting to this crowd who were worried that Obama would be just another left-leaning supporter of teachers unions.    The proposals do not make much sense, it is true. So, is it just rhetoric to build bi-partisan support for his larger program? Or is it really what he believes? I am not so sure where this leaves us on the federal role in education. As an Obama supporter, his education agenda has been, as Diane Ravitch said, "not the change we need."

Anybody else feel this way? If no, why not? (For another good take on Obama's speech, see Caroline Grannan's post.)

Clay Burell
PREVIOUS STORY:
Pres. Obama, Korea is No Argument for Longer School Hours
NEXT STORY:
Student loans got you down? Start a petition.

COMMENTS (4)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.