Obama’s real education legacy: Common Core, testing, charter schools
President Obama went to a high-performing D.C. high school this week to tout the “progress” his administration has made in public education, America’s most important civic institution. To mark the legacy moment, he brought along the two men who have served as his education secretaries — Arne Duncan and John King Jr., along with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, D.C. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Gen. Colin Powell and his wife Alma.
It’s what he didn’t say that was most revealing. A fuller evaluation of the Obama education legacy would look somewhat different from the one he offered.
Obama charmed the student audience at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, joking with them and telling them he remembers some of the awkward social moments of being a high school student. As the White House text shows:
So, by now you’ve settled into the new year. Right? Adjusted to classes. You’re preparing for Spirit Week. (Applause.) Learning how to ballroom dance. (Laughter.) I remember having to do that. Getting the nerve to text that cute girl or boy in your English class. (Laughter.) I don’t remember that; we did not have texts. We had to send little notes. And then we used to actually have to go up to somebody if we liked them and talk to them. So that may happen to you someday. (Laughter.)
He reminded the kids that he had visited Banneker in 2011 and was so impressed that he wanted to return “because you’re an example of a school that’s doing things the right way.” Later he said he wanted every school to be “as great as this one.”
Students take photos of U.S. President Barack Obama following remarks at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 17, 2016. (Photo by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)There’s no denying that Banneker is a top-performing school in the nation’s capital, and that 100 percent of its seniors graduate. But it’s unclear if Obama knows that if every school did what Banneker does, the high school graduation rate might plummet. That’s because Banneker is a magnet school where students must apply to get in — but the only entry grades are ninth and tenth. And they must maintain a B- average to stay. Kids who can’t cut it leave, but that attrition isn’t counted against the school’s graduation rate.
Obama did touch on graduation rates, touting the newly announced, highest-ever national high school graduation rate of 83 percent. He noted that “D.C.’s graduation rates grew faster than any other place in the country” this past year. He didn’t say that that “fastest-growing” Obama’s real education legacy: Common Core, testing, charter schools - The Washington Post:
