President Obama spoke forcefully on education in his State of the Union last night. I just hope he means what he said and has the political support to follow through. These are the four points that provoked an immediate reaction:
* Promising to give schools the flexibility to teach with creativity and passion instead of teaching to the test is something parents and teachers have long wanted to hear. But how many educators are willing to admit they've been teaching to the test? How are schools going to get them to stop as long as the tests continue to proliferate and as long as merit pay proposals are tied to student performance?
* Having seen too many political manipulations involving threatened teacher layoffs, I have doubts about the President's commitment to give schools the resources to keep teachers on the job and reward the best. When every county employee was subject to furloughs in Montgomery County, Md., teachers demanded a free pass. When Baltimore was cutting back teacher jobs for supposed lack of funds, the city came up with a salary in excess of $200,000 for a new deputy superintendent. Instead of pouring more resources into schools when we already lead the nations in educational spending, we should stop doling out funds and instead work to ensure the money devoted to education is spent wisely.
* Changing the laws so that all students are required to stay in school until they graduate or turn 18 is an initiative long overdue. The social and economic costs of dropping out affect not only the dropouts themselves, but society at large. Those costs include 5 percent higher unemployment than the general population, higher rates of imprisonment, and an estimated $26 billion in lost tax revenues, according to a study discussed on Incipit Vita Nova.
* Demanding that colleges keep costs down and refusing to endlessly increase the monies spent on higher education is also a long overdue plan, but likely a hollow one. Profiteers in higher education have overtaken the traditional colleges. For-profit schools graduated an average of 22 percent of their enrollees in 2008-2009, while laying claim to some $24 billion in federal education funds. Congress has not found the strength to shut down this shameful industry and it's not likely to do so in the future thanks to the entrenched education lobby. President Obama's own words- "Higher education can't be a luxury -- it is an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford"- will be turned against him sooner than he realizes as parties accustomed to raking in big money extend their hands even further.
Carol Bengle Gilbert worked as an education attorney and navigates the public school system with three children of her own.
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