On Tuesday night, Obama gave a brilliant
State of the Union address. But I can't say I appreciated what he said about education.
He seems to have pivoted in his approach. Though I'm glad he is no longer assigning responsibility for low educational performance on ineffective teachers, he is now appearing to blame parents for not having high enough standards for their children or their schools.
In this, he seems to be taking his cue from Arne Duncan, who
famously critiqued parents protesting the flawed Common core standards, describing them as “
white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”
More recently,
Duncan spoke before the National PTA , and praised South K
oreans as “parents [who] were relentless and had the highest of expectations – insisting their children receive an excellent education….I wished our biggest challenge here in the US was too many parents demanding excellent schools.” Duncan went on to exhort parents: As you think about how to use your voice, your time, and your energy, I want to pose one simple question to you: Does a child in South Korea deserve a better education than your child? If your answer is no — that no child in America deserves any less than a world-class education — then your work is cut out for you.
Because right now, South Korea – and quite a few other countries – are offering students more, and demanding more, than many American districts
