Obama’s state of dissension
One of President Obama’s sustained, bipartisan applause lines in the State of the Union address was his call for giving teachers the level of respect they get in South Korea. Applause faded when he then said, “We want to reward good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones.” And there was just polite patter when he said, “And Race to the Top should be the approach we follow this year as we replace No Child Left Behind with a law that’s more flexible and focused on what’s best for our kids.”
If the applause meter is the measure, President Obama faces a tough task weaving compromise between those who equate any criticism of teacher unions as teacher bashing and those who see any retreat from No Child Left Behind as catering to the status quo. The former are hyper-sensitive and end up defending the worst union practices: rote performance reviews, overprotective tenure laws, and pay scales that discourage initiative among young teachers. The latter are obtuse and end up defending a federal law that has narrowed the curriculum for poor students, obsessively focused on badly designed standardized tests, and imposed rigid sanctions without crediting success.
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