President Obama delivered a major, long (over 4,500 words), and substantive speech on education this morning. Transcript here; coverage here and here.
The media will likely focus on the several issues certain to raise the ire of unions, such as performance pay, firing weak teachers, and strong support for charter schools. But there are many other noteworthy points throughout the speech as well as some standard fare and a few passing references that will need more filling out.
The speech had familiar anchors: achievement gaps, personal responsibility, and international competition. It also made use of the common Obama tactic of framing his positions as inhabiting the sensible middle ground between polarized parties and being beyond the ideological battles of the past. Interestingly, he twice made the point that money alone would not solve our education problems.
As for the substance, it was built around ???????five pillars???????: 1) early childhood, 2) standards and assessments, 3) recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers, 4) promoting innovation and excellence, and 5) higher education
In early childhood, he touted funding in the stimulus for Head Start and child care programs. He also challenged states to raise the quality of their early learning programs.
In the standards and assessments section, he avoided taking a position on the dominant issue of the day (national standards), which might be a position in itself (opposed?). He lamented that US curriculum is less challenging than other nations', and that we have 50 different accountability systems. The President encouraged ???????tougher, clearer standards,??????? and called on governors and state chiefs to develop systems that measure ???????21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity.??????? (No mention of whether this should be 50 different systems, several regional systems, one organically developed system, one federally created system???????)
He also checked two important boxes on data, speaking highly of systems that ???????keep track of a student's education from childhood through college,??????? (???????K-16??????? or ???????K-20??????? data systems) and those that ???????track how much progress a student is making and where that student is struggling??????? (value-added systems). The most striking part here, however, was his noting that value-added systems (presumably with teacher identifiers) can ???????tell us which students had which teachers so we can assess what's working and what's not.??????? This will not make the unions happy.
In the recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers section, he made a Teach for America-style call for ???????a new generation of Americans to step forward and serve our country in our classrooms.??????? This, however, was followed by an ambitious but overly general list of new, unnamed programs (I'm guessing these will be in the fleshed out in the 2010 budget?), including initiatives to ???????prepare teachers for their difficult responsibilities and encourage them to stay in the profession,??????? create ???????new pathways to teaching and new incentives to bring teachers to schools where they are needed most,??????? ???????offer extra pay to Americans who teach math and science,??????? and build ???????on the promising work being done in South Carolina's Teacher Advancement Program.???????
The most striking part of this section and probably of the entire speech was his taking aim at underperforming educators:
???????that means states and school districts taking steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom. Let me be clear: if a teacher is given a chance but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.
In the promoting innovation and excellence section, he praised charter schools and called on states to remove their charter caps. This is a major statement and an unequivocal position. He also called for longer school days and school years, saying our current school calendar is a relic of a bygone age that puts our students at an international disadvantage.
The higher education section focused on affordability and accessibility issues, such as making Pell Grants a mandatory spending program (and indexing maximum awards above inflation) and expanding federal loan programs.
Big speech. Provocative points. Let the debate begin???????