12:03AM
Obama's stealthy education reform?
Saturday, September 18, 2010 at 12:03AM 
Jonathan Alter in Newsweek making the case that "U.S. education reform has made more progress in the last year than in the previous 10" and "how the president is driving the effort."
Cheesy start (the movie "Jackass" as feeble straw man) mars the piece.
The cited "engine of reform" is Obama's Race to the Top program. Small pot of money but successful, says Alter, in establishing national standards and lifting state caps on charter schools.
Other details covered, but political case made is that it took a "Nixon" (liberal Dem) to effectively do battle with teachers' unions.
To be watched . . ..
Reader Comments (2)
I will have to give the president credit for not being shy about tackling obvious problems that were sure to cause political headaches. I would give him an A for effort on health care but a D for execution. On education, when you have 50% of your high school seniors fail to graduate and you don't think changes need to be made, you are dilusional. Good to see for the country that at least one well connected, entrenched special interest is being challenged. Hopefully more will follow on both sides of the aisle.
Perhaps if we can get to the top only with mathematics and simple reading skills centered on the lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy, then we are on the right track.
Take a closer look Tom, the devil is in the details. The latest Fed push is for states to adopt "Common Core Standards" that are free of history, political science, rigorous science or anything requiring deep thought or likely to provoke controversy. That decision is left to states and localities - who are busy excising history and science from the curriculum to free up more time to prepare for standardized testing in math and reading skills under NCLB.
http://www.corestandards.org/
Not the dumbed down education I want for my kids.