It was a good speech, even if it was the wrong one.
This week my school showed all our students Obama’s speech about No Child Left Behind flexibility when it meant to air his third annual back-to-school speech.
I can’t say I minded too much, especially considering that in the NCLB speech Obama highlighted the sorts of problems that make President Bush’s education baby a “race to the bottom”: all that states have to do in order to be labeled successful is lower their standards.
Indeed, under NCLB, states that don’t lower their standards are labeled as failures: in nationally highly ranked Massachusetts, a school ranked in the state’s top quarter and from which every graduate last year went to college was labeled “failing” under NCLB, I suspect because it did not make “adequate yearly progress.” This was the problem my school had last year; when you’re already good, it’s really hard to improve.
What I certainly will mind, however, is if Obama’s replacement “reform” will push equally hard or harder for accountability through one-size-fits-all assessments that inevitably leads to “teaching to the test.”
Maybe I’ll vote for Bachmann next year, since she’ll get rid of the Department of Education.