How Schools Can Achieve Obama's Lofty Education Goals
Three positive trends offer big lessons on making America more educationally competitive by 2020
Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail, is coauthor of the recent New America Foundation report, "Pathway to the Baccalaureate." Andrew Rotherham is a partner at Bellwether Education and writes the blog Eduwonk.com.
Finding depressing education news is easy. The recession, combined with the waning of federal stimulus money, is about to trigger hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs—an "education catastrophe," warns Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
The layoffs will play out against a background of flat national reading scores and mediocre showings on international education rankings. Looming behind everything: the country's much-debated school reform law, No Child Left Behind, has fallen into disrepute.
None of this can be sugarcoated; yet dwelling on the negatives masks some significant education breakthroughs that promise to pay dividends for years to come. Together they represent the country's best shot at achieving President Obama's ambitious goal of pushing