The Obama Education Legacy
Last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced his resignation. With Congress controlled by the Republicans and the administration having run out of stimulus cash, played its "waiver" card, and been rebuffed on plans to use its college scorecard to impose NCLB for higher ed, things are winding down. Things could still happen— most significantly ESEA reauthorization— but we're getting close to the time when Department of Ed staff will be on caretaker status. That makes this a propitious moment, especially as the campaign for 2016 begins in earnest, to examine the Obama education legacy.
The most recent issue of the quarterly National Affairs contains an extended essay offering my own take. It begins,
President Obama entered the Oval Office in 2009 with great hope and promise. Education reform, in particular, seemed set to benefit. Candidate Obama had made a point of using education to illustrate that he was championing "investment" rather than mere government "spending" and was eager to find bipartisan solutions. The education landscape seemed ready for that kind of leadership. As Jeb Bush declared in 2009, "I'm excited. . . because I think for the first time in my political life, there seems to be more consensus than disagreement across the ideological spectrum about education reform."
Arne Duncan, Obama's choice for secretary of education, drew widespread praise. At Duncan's confirmation hearing, Republican senator (and former secretary of education) Lamar Alexander said, "President-elect Obama has made several distinguished Cabinet appointments. From my view of it all, I think you are the best." And influential Republicans endorsed Obama's early efforts. In a telling example, Newt Gingrich joined Duncan and Al Sharpton in 2009 on a multi-city school tour to support Obama's education agenda and lend it a bipartisan gloss.
Some of Obama's early moves suggested he would indeed be a "post-partisan" education reformer. His appointees to the Department of Education were a talented bunch, drawing heavily from the "reform" wing of the Democratic Party and reaching beyond the Beltway bubble. He did things that aren't easy for a Democrat on the national stage to do: He advocated charter schools, tussled with the teacher unions, and went after the schools of education. The administration sporadically tried to reduce the paper burden on school districts, had a secretary of education who (for a brief time) said schools needed to find ways to do more with less, and enjoyed some admirable success in increasing the role of evidence in making education funding decisions.
Obama also made powerful use of his own background to challenge America to do right by vulnerable children— and to challenge those children and their parents to do their part. He insisted that, when it comes to helping "boys and young men of color who are having a particularly tough time...government cannot play the only— or even the primary— role." He said, "We can help give every child access to quality preschool. . . but we can't replace the power of a parent who's reading to that child. We can reform our criminal justice The Obama Education Legacy :: Frederick M. Hess:
