Obama to Propose New Plan to Raise Education Standards in U.S.
March 13, 2010, 6:36 AM ESTBy Kate Andersen Brower
March 13 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said he will send Congress a plan to update the U.S. government’s main education aid program with an “ambitious goal” for all students to “graduate from high school prepared for college and a career.”
The administration’s blueprint for achieving this aim will be sent to Congress March 15, Obama said in his weekly address on radio and Internet. He said the plan is intended as an overhaul of the No Child Left Behind law, a signature legislative initiative of his predecessor, President George W. Bush.
The 2002 law requires states to measure student achievement through standardized tests. Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, has said the law’s focus on individual states setting their own academic goals has resulted in an uneven patchwork of standards, and that states have no incentive to embrace tougher goals because they fear losing federal money. Obama has said the law caused 11 states to lower standards in math to meet progress requirements.
The Obama plan to be submitted to Congress would change the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, a federal aid program that’s typically rewritten every five years, so that states and local school districts are more active in rewarding schools that do well and revamping schools “that are clearly letting their students down,” the president said in his radio address.
“For the majority of schools that fall in between -- schools that do well but could do better -- we will encourage continuous improvement,” he said.
Falling Behind
Obama said change is needed because students in the U.S. are falling behind those in most wealthy nations in the graduation rates for high school and college. Also, “one assessment shows American 15-year-olds no longer even near the top in math and science when compared to their peers around the world,” the president said.
“Our competitors understand that the nation that out- educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow,” he said.
Obama praised Duncan for his oversight of the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund, the largest pool of federal discretionary education money in U.S. history. States are competing for money from the program with plans that include commitments to raise educational standards, reward good teachers and “by emphasizing math and science to help prepare children for college and careers,” he said.
America’s future success “will ultimately depend on what happens long before an entrepreneur opens his doors, or a nurse walks the rounds, or a scientist steps into her laboratory,” Obama said. “Our future is determined each and every day, when our children enter the classroom, ready to learn and brimming with promise.”
Republican Address
In the Republican address, Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown targeted for attack Obama’s effort to overhaul the U.S. health-care system, which House Democratic leaders are pushing to pass next week.
Brown said Obama should be focusing on creating jobs instead of “defying the public will” with a “bitter, destructive, and endless drive to completely transform America’s health-care system.”
He said when he was elected in a Jan. 19 special election to occupy the seat long held by Democrat Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts voters “sent more than a senator to Washington -- they sent a message.”
60th Vote
Before the election, Democrats were days away from passing a compromise version of health bills the House and Senate had approved. Brown’s victory deprived them of the 60th Senate vote they needed to complete that process.
With Democrats now in the midst of their renewed effort to pass the legislation, Brown said that “somehow, the greater the public opposition to the health-care bill, the more determined they seem to force it on us anyway.”
He added, “Their attitude shows Washington at its very worse -- the presumption that they know best, and they’re going to get their way whether the American people like it or not.”
Brown said “an entire year has gone to waste” during which the administration could have been concentrating on trying to improve the economy.
--With assistance from John Hechinger in Boston and Kristin Jensen and Molly Peterson in Washington. Editors: Don Frederick, Mike Millard.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kate Andersen Brower at Kandersen7@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jim Kirk at jkirk12@bloomberg.net.
