Among other things, he said that in up to 150 school districts, good teachers will be paid more if their students do better, but he didn’t explain how his administration will identify good teachers or measure student achievement. He also encouraged schools to extend the length of their day and year but did not specify how to pay for the change in times of recession. And he challenged governors to adopt higher standards in their states, but he left open the question of whether those standards should be the same from state to state.
Fordham’s latest study, The Accountability Illusion, precisely illustrates the mess caused by the 50 different sets of standards. It can be let open, we need to avoid the actual state of our schools in what Amy Fagan identifies as a "rather idiosyncratic, random and opaque" system.
Not all agree on what is a positive signal or a negative and "lofty rethoric" of President Obama. We think it's a good start but it needs to be implemented. Only then, we will be able to see results and judge based on those, and not only on words.
For more buzz on Obama's mayor intervention about how education is so valuable in an economic crisis like this we live in, please read round-ups presented by Joanne Jacobs (Obama backs merit pay, charter schools) and Alexander Russo's OBAMA: Big(?) Speech On Education Today
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