"Obama’s A+ in education" - Democratic Underground

impik

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Fri Jun-11-10 11:00 AM
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"Obama’s A+ in education"

How do you define the success or failure of a presidency? Can you look at a timeline of the four (or eight) years that a president is in office and pinpoint the “Ah! There it is” moment? It may seem readily apparent to state that many people and events contribute to how a presidential administration is perceived — look at Bush the younger, for example. If you think about George W. Bush, you might associate him with 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the No Child Left Behind Act and the war in Iraq. However, it would be remiss to ignore the fact that, for many administrations, a single event or decision has become the defining factor: Reaganomics, the New Deal, the Gulf War, Watergate, and again, the Iraq War will all live on with their administrations in esteem or infamy.

While he is only two years into his administration, we’re calling it now: barring World War III, “Race to the Top” will be President Obama’s defining moment. Poll any 10 people sitting by you; half of them won’t know what it is.

Race to the Top, a grant competition open to all 50 of the United States for a cut of the $4.3 billion pot, involved two phases (the second of which ended on June 1). The winners will be those officials who provided the best outline for a massive overhaul of the education system in their state. This has included changing the way that teachers are evaluated, the standards by which students are held in certain grade levels, and allowing for alternative forms of education to come into play. In addition to the outline for reform, states must demonstrate that they have taken the necessary steps toward legally implementing the more difficult or controversial aspects of their outlines.

Each state is judged on a 500-point system with criteria judging teacher effectiveness, new achievement and testing standards, the implementation of charter schools, and reform efforts aimed at the lowest-achieving schools. The most important criterion — worth a whopping 138 points — is based on a required change in how teachers are evaluated. The competition calls for previously unprecedented performance-based evaluations, and therein lies the rub.

Five years ago, a prospective teacher would go to school, get certification, and then — after three or so years of satisfactory performance in the classroom — receive tenure. He or she would work a six-hour and 57-and-a-half minute day and get paid based on how many years of work had been completed. It was very difficult to get fired; teacher unions existed mostly to combat rampant discrimination. Recently, things have recently for the better, with equal pay and equal job growth becoming the new norms (and overzealous bureaucratic heckling coming along for the ride).

Now, led by many new alumni from Teach for America, Race to the Top says “no more” to tenure, longer days, and old systems of evaluating performance. It is repealing the need for the teachers’ union, and one example of the usefulness of this is exemplified by the charter school.

In a recent New York Times Magazine story, Steven Brill, co-founder of the “Journalism Online” website and author of The Teamsters (1978), analyzed a comparison of one charter school and one public school in Harlem. The schools shared the same building, including the gymnasium and cafeteria, and often parents had children attending each. The charter started at 7:45 a.m. and ended around 5:30 p.m. Teachers were paid 5 to 10 percent more, but they had to be available by cell phone and were required to meet every Saturday for development training. Thus, because the state spent, in total, $18, 378 per student per year, each student was expected to excel. On the public side, school began at 8:30 a.m. and ended around 4 p.m., teachers were paid 5 to 10 percent less and had no availability requirements, and the state spent $19, 358 per student. At the charter school, 72 percent of children attending were reading at grade level, with only 5 percent below and an astonishing 23 percent above. And the public school? Fifty-one percent of attendees read at grade level, with 49 percent below and no students above grade level.

Same building, same parents, same low-income, gang-afflicted neighborhood — but with much different results. The rally cry from right-wingers tends to favor letting parents teach and choose for their kids. Well, the parents responded: Charter schools work by a lottery, and in Harlem, 14,000 kids tried to get into 2,700 seats.

So now, a little over one week after the close of the second phase, there has been more education reform in this country than in the past 60 years combined. It also required little-to-no legislative effort on the part of the federal government. States decide where to make changes and how to implement their winnings, and Democrats no longer have to choose between getting elected or pissing off the teachers’ union. Fifty years from now (barring World War III), we hope Obama’s time in office will be known as “the education era,” and children around the country will learn about our 43rd president in charter schools.

http://www.dailyiowan.com/2010/06/11/Opinions/17447.html