NCLB Part Deux

Today Obama decided it would be a good idea to make an address about the state of education in the U.S. Yes, I’m starting this as though I were back in high school, writing for the school paper. Yes, the title of this is intentionally similar to a spoof movie. Yes, I’ve done all of this to point out the sophomoric nature of the president’s contentions today – or in more plain English, to point out that I’m neither impressed nor amused.

Moving on to more mundane references to pop culture, this latest situation with education calls to mind P!nk’s “Dear Mr. President” – and is heartily tempting me to toy with those old lyrics to fit Obama, although right now, they already do when it comes to education. The rhetoric is a little more polished, but it’s still more of the same.

I already know that there will be numbers crunchers out there that will cry foul for one reason or another on this one, but at this point, it’s too tempting for me to ignore it. As quoted in the Washington Post, 70% of freshmen today are graduating high school. Now, based on dropout rates listed by the U.S. Department of Education from 2001 (Table 1), that’s down from 86.5%.

Before anyone starts yelling “apples and oranges”, and claiming that it’s an unfair comparison, the only reason I am even mentioning this is the fact that Obama didn’t bother to suggest anything new for education today. There’s some name-changing, and minor adjustments to NCLB standards of practice, but no meaningful differences – like removal of unfunded mandates (or the novel concept of offering Fed dollars for them), or reassessment of educational standards for educators.

Sure, Obama “said” that teaching is an important profession, but it’s lip service, just as it always has been. And my contention that we can’t expect meaningful change in education until we address problems in the system that creates teachers is still as valid as it ever was – still shared by at least a few scholars and researchers in the field. We didn’t need fast-tracking for people wanting to become teachers – one of the “shiny objects” from NCLB that still is ignored, in spite of its complete stupidity. We don’t need colleges and universities treating their Education departments like “cash cows” for the benefit of anyone but their Education departments. But there was no mention of that – apparently Obama thinks it’s enough to just say teachers are important.

It’s also important to keep talking about increasing standards for students, closing down poor-performing schools, or restarting schools in the hope that shutting them down temporarily will somehow magically make them better. Bluntly, a decent sound technician could have dabbled with the audio track today, making it sound like Bush, and I honestly wouldn’t have known the difference if it was on the radio. (I might have thought, “Wow! Bush is really on his game today. He must have practiced this speech for a long time!) But hey, change is about keeping programs that don’t work so well, right?

And yes, the next time someone jumps on me for not being enthusiastic about health care reform, I’m going to mention this one!