On primary-secondary education, as on most topics, Mr. Obama stayed at 30,000 feet [in his State of the Union address]. The main themes he sounded, however, are fine: use federal education dollars to reward success, not failure; apply Arne Duncan’s “race to the top” reform priorities to the mega-bucks Elementary/Secondary Education Act; and keep a “competitive” element in this rather than simply distributing dollars via formula. All extremely hard to do but all worth doing…Four points here bear noting…Read it here.