Statement on President Obamas First Year
Unfettered by inside-the-beltway partisan politics President Obama indisputably has affected more change in the nations education policies in his first year in office than any President in modern history.
The boost that the Administrations Race to the Top initiative - which was accompanied by a record $100 billion increase in general federal aid to education - has given state and local education reform efforts is the Administrations biggest domestic policy success of 2009 - all without yet expending a dime of the $5 billion Race to the Top fund.
Whats more while not a single Republican Congressman and only 3 Republican Senators voted for the economic and education reform stimulus package last February the policy initiatives that Obama and Secretary Duncan put forth have since been embraced through both words and action by state and local elected officials in both parties across the ideological and geographical spectrum.
These accomplishments reflect campaign promises kept - in recognition of the relationship between education reform jobs and economic growth - to make education one of three key components of a long-term U.S. economic recovery strategy (the other two being energy and health care which obviously and to say the least have not fared as well) an augur well for the work on education reform that is yet to come.
Some effects are immediate - for example more than a hundred thousand slots have already opened to parents across the country who want to choose a high
quality public charter school for their children.
Others such as changes in state academic standards to ensure that students are college and career ready the development of better tests more rigorous qualification criteria and better pay for teachers and fundamental overhauls of chronically failing schools will pay dividends later this year and over the next several.
These changes reflect an ongoing and historic realignment in education politics.
First the politics of education reform at least once one gets outside the Beltway increasingly have less to do with inter-party politics than with pragmatism and the imperative need to get children out of schools to which no parent would voluntarily choose to send their children.
Second and equally important it represents forward thinking by the President which reflects a broader base of support for real education reform within the Democratic party. The days when the interests of adults completely overrode those of children and parents when elected officials not only did some of what they were asked to do by the education establishment but everything they were told are slowly but surely coming to a close.
This is the beginning of the end of monolithic control by powerful interests over education policy that has stymied sensible education reform in the U.S. for decades.
The fights are far from over.
While some states that have been historically intransigent to real education reform such as California have enacted ground-breaking policies as part of their Race to the Top effort others notably New York succumbed to back room tactics and bullying by lobbyists trying to preserve and defend an educational system that is failing hundreds of thousands of children in that state alone.
Moreover the real challenges for the Administration the real tests of its resolve remain. Especially in an election year government officials will have to work hard not to succumb to political pressure to reward states that have proven to be unwilling to advance credible and ambitious reforms.
A retreat to this old way of doing things in Washington would represent a squandered opportunity of epic proportions.
If the Administration continues to keep the bar high for Race to the Top and stays
on the path of real change by making major investments only in those states and school districts that have shown the willingness to break out of the old ways of doing things it will mark a major turning point in U.S. education policy the effects of which will reverberate for decades.
Download DFERs handy 5-page fact sheet on
Educational Change We Can Believe In here. For more information on Democrats for Education Reform visit
www.dfer.org.
