AndyKroll.com

 

Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

It’s beginning to look like the only difference between the Obama administration’s vision for public education standards — most notably, No Child Left Behind — and the Bush administration’s positions is the name. 

In today’s New York Times, Sam Dillon reports that President Obama and his shaky point man on education, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, appear poised to continue many of the same test score-based, data driven forms of education reforms characteristic of the White House’s previous occupants. Though the administration’s plans are still vague at this point, Obama and Duncan’s nods to extending No Child left Behind (by throwing more money at it) and judging teacher success are worrisome, to say the least. 

More on why we’re heading down the wrong path after the jump.

The Obama administration is right to say improvements are needed in teacher quality and accountability among K-12 schools; no one doubts that sentiment. But the way the new administration seems to be addressing those changes is merely to cement the status quo.

As Diane Ravitch, a education historian, told The Times in today’s article, “Obama’s fundamental strategy is the same as George Bush’s: standardized tests, numbers-crunching; it’s the N.C.L.B. approach with lots of money attached.”

The conditions attached to Obama’s stimulus package funding for education offer a good glimpse of where we could be heading. There are four “assurances” attached for governors: To improve the “quality” of standardized tests and raise those standards; make sure their state’s best teachers are evenly distributed to all schools, rich or poor, high- or low-achieving; and the creation of a “Race to the Top” fund, controlled by Duncan, with $5 billion that the Ed. Sec. can give to states fulfilling those pledges.

Spreading talented teachers across all schools is important; the federal government should be commended for that. But a question still looms: How do we determine who the good teachers are? In answering that, the Obama administration’s positions begin to disappoint.

As The Times reported:

In one of the stimulus assurances, for instance, governors must pledge that their states are building sophisticated data systems. Among other functions, such systems would link teachers to students and test scores and thus, in theory, enable the authorities to distinguish between effective and ineffective teachers. In a March 10 speech, President Obama endorsed using such data systems “to tell us which students had which teachers so we can assess what’s working and what’s not.”

 

In an interview, Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, said he did not like that part of the president’s speech.

 

“When he equates teachers with test scores, that’s when we part company,” Mr. Van Roekel said. But he added: “Over all, I just really support Obama’s vision to strengthen public education.” 

Teachers = test scores is not the answer. And the claim that, well, the unions support Obama and Duncan so that means they must be on the right track is bogus and misleading — and it has been since the day Duncan was nominated.

Of course the unions are going to either praise the Obama administration/Duncan or withhold their criticisms (especially this early in the new president’s tenure)! They have to work with these legislators and officials day in and day out; they’re not going to outright say, “This is BS; we completely disagree; this Bush all over again” etc., etc. Just like when papers like The Times reported that the unions supported the nomination of Duncan: Odds are many didn’t, given his record of shutting out the teachers’ union in Chicago, but none of them are going to fray their relationships from the start. 

In short, it’s worrisome news on the education front as it relates to the Obama administration. More effort should be taken on the part of unions and concerned teachers and officials to prevent more Bush-era education policies, i.e., NCLB, data-driven standards, teaching to the test. Otherwise we’re further condemning our students to an education of rote memorization and standardized test taking over one that emphasizes critical thinking, curiosity, that it’s OK to make mistakes and that gives talented teachers the opportunity to teach to the best of their abilities.