Education Reforms

President Obama showed a willingness to take on vested interests in education in his remarks to the U.S. Hispanic Chapmber of Commerce yesterday. He said, "education has been hurt by the stale political debates in Washington." Obama rightly tied education in with the nation's economic concerns, pointing out that for today's children, given increasingly competitive globalization, it is the only, "way to prepare them for a 21st century economy."

Obama offers a lot more federal spending on behalf of education, and that will please and gratify teachers, liberals and the education community in general. But in exchange he is calling for changes the teacher's unions have long resisted. The stimulus bill provides $5 billion in new funds for Early Head Start and $41 billion in grants to school districts. It sounds as though he wants a standardized nationwide set of criteria, or "benchmarks for academic success," to ensure that, "teachers and principals get the funding they need, but that the money is tied to results." It is hard to see how that could be much different from the concept animating "No Child Left Behind," or that anything other than standardized national testing would be needed to ascertain those results. It must be admitted that for each state to design its own test, one it feels it can reach, since that is how to get whatever scarce funding is available under NCLB, is a prescription for meaningless results. That is why a standardized national set of tests may be coming in the Obama Administration.

The President called for states to remove caps on the number of charter schools. Charter schools are popular with upwardly mobile parents and students. They often have a theme or concentration, such as Math and Science, Fine Arts, Liberal Arts or vocational. Resistance in the academic community comes from the philosphical position that public schools should be eclectic and general; that vocational, technological, artistic programs as well as the humanities should be offered at all high schools. From this perspective, the charter school concept is a way to shortchange investment in education by restricting high quality programs in a particular field to only a few schools in a large district, and to separate students into interest and ability levels.

Obama again called for higher salaries and stepped-up recruiting, tied to the ability to get rid of underperforming teachers and merit pay for better teachers. As someone with 17 years of full-time experience in the public schools and ten at the community college level, I can say that my experience has been that the overwhelming majority of teachers are competent, dedicated and highly professional. Most have little patience for the few of their colleagues who are not.

Sincere objections to termination procedures and merit pay plans come from real concerns about making them fair. In the case of termination, the fact is that despite tenure, it is possible to dismiss incompetent teachers right now. It does require a solid record of documentation on the part of the responsible administrator or administrators, a remediation plan and the granting of sufficent time for the teacher to effect improvement. From what I have seen, the usual holdup is the reluctance of the administrator to put forth the effort to see the process through.

As for merit pay, there are many variables needed to make it accurate and fair. There is already a good deal of competition among teachers to be assigned the better students. This will become rampant in a merit pay system if safeguards are not put into place to prevent it. Senior teachers or a principal's favorites could well game the system to their advantage. In similar fashion, it would be important to develop "benchmarks" that take into account the socioeconomic profile of a school when determining the teachers' effectiveness. A teacher in an impoverished migrant rural or inner city school might be doing a tremendous job to have half her students at grade level in reading. Another teacher in an affluent upper middle class school might be doing a poor job if fewer than half her students were two grade levels ahead. These are the kinds of considerations that would need to be taken into account for a merit pay plan to mean anything real.

Obama's plans to increase assistance to students in higher education are most welcome in all respects. We are wasting enormous human capital by making it impossible for many to attend college due to financial constraints. More grants, loans and the "tuition for service" initiatives are good ideas that will extend the ladder of opportunity and make the nation more productive and competitive.

The bottom line is that much improvement and experimentation is needed, and the new administration seems more than willing to think out of the box and get the ball rolling. It would be good if effective reform can survive the political process without either being watered down to ineffectuality or falling prey to interest or ideology. Because of his popularity in the educational community in general, Obama probably has a better chance to shepherd positive education reform than any president in a good long while. It would be exceptionally good for the nation if that opportunity is not wasted.