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Obama: Rate teachers based on student performance; reaction mixed
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A student with “Obama” clipped into his hair listens to President Obama at Wright Middle School.
President Barack Obama's speech last week in Wisconsin was a Rorschach test of educational politics. The president again proved that people project their own beliefs on him and then think he's on their side.
The Washington Post and The Washington Times both covered the speech favorably, if that's an indication.
The conservative Times was effusive in its opening paragraph: "President Obama sent an unmistakable message to the nation's teachers unions and school administrators Wednesday during a speech at a Wisconsin charter school: Don't stand in the way of education reform."
The opening in the liberal Post was more restrained, but still favorable: "President Obama marked the anniversary of his election Wednesday by speaking in unusually personal terms with schoolchildren and educators in a politically friendly state, far from the partisan fray in Washington."
CNN Opinion's Ruben Navarrette Jr. published a column under the headline, "Give Obama A+ for school reform ideas."
And a local TV station chose to feature a story about a Liberian immigrant who attended the speech wearing a cheese-head hat. The Associated Press followed the story.
Accompanied by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Mr. Obama visited the James C. Wright Middle School in Madison, Wis., speaking to about 250 students and hundreds of teachers, parents, elected officials and visitors. The charter campus has an innovative program and an ethnically diverse student body.
The November 4 speech marked the first anniversary of Mr. Obama's election.
His talk unequivocally supported educational reform, and he called attention to his $4.35 billion "Race to the Top" grant program. The Department of Education expects to award the first grants next spring.
The meaning of reform, however, seems to depend on the observer.
Sasha Sidorkin, director of the School of Teacher Education, University of Northern Colorado, and Education Reform Examiner for Examiner.com, gave the speech generally good marks, but with caveats. He endorsed national standards for teachers, but only if directed by the professoriate.
"For example, the national curriculum can be screwed up just as easily as state curricula have been butchered in the past ... To avoid that, the national standards have to be developed by small groups of experts, and have some idea of curriculum behind them," Sidorkin wrote.
The president announced some specific goals. Nonetheless, how educators approach those goals will determine the consequences. Advocates of parental choice ultimately will find little common ground with the National Education Association and the teacher colleges.
Talking about the Race to the Top grants, the president delivered three passages that illustrate why observers took away different impressions of the speech — or similarly favorable impressions from clashing perspectives:
- "It's been Democrat versus Republican, it's been voucher versus public schools, it's been more money versus more reform. In some cases, people have seen schools as sort of a political spoil having to do with jobs and contracts instead of what we're teaching kids."
- "Any state that has a so-called firewall law will have to remove them. Now, here's what a firewall law is: It basically says that you can't factor in the performance of students when you're evaluating teachers."
- "We've got to do a better job of rewarding outstanding teachers. And I've got to be honest, we've got to do a better job of moving bad teachers out of the classroom, once they've been given an opportunity to do it right."
At Madison, the first and third lines, on conflict and rewards, drew applause. The "firewall" line drew silence.
These extracted passages and other statements in the speech lend support to the notion of teacher accountability. In American practice, however, tenure usually has trumped performance appraisal. The details will determine the results.
At the same time, the passages give support to higher teacher pay. Notwithstanding resistance to higher taxes, smaller classes and higher teacher pay enjoy wide support in most quarters.
The gold standard of educational reform among conservative critics is vouchers. The Madison speech mentioned vouchers only once, less than one-third of the way through in the dismissive line, "It's been voucher versus public schools, it's been more money versus more reform."
Vouchers are not on the Obama agenda. Indeed, the Obama administration has opposed the Opportunity Scholarship Program that provides vouchers of up to $7,500 for Washington, D.C. students, to attend private schools.
Key reforms in the Race to the Top program are 1) setting standards and assessments, 2) recruiting and preparing new teachers, 3) tracking student progress and 4) fixing or closing failing schools.
The Madison speech passed without much controversy. Although the reform concepts may be serious, and $4.35 billion is a lot of money, the presentation remains more platitude than substance until the administration writes the rules — and puts them into force.
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