Education Week - The Obama Education Plan: An Education Week Guide

Education Week is the nations premier independent news source for K12 education. Commonly referred to as American Educations Newspaper of Record, the nonprofit newspaper has kept educators and policymakers abreast of important developments in schools for more than 27 years. Education Week boasts a staff of more than 30 reporters and editors, each and every one an expert in the complicated world of covering education. Increasingly, Education Week is focusing on coverage that seeks to help policymakers and practitioners identify what works, promising strategies, and model programs.

Education Week Press is one arm of Editorial Projects in Education (EPE), an independent, nonprofit corporation dedicated to elevating the level of discourse on American K12 education and best known as the publisher of Education Week. EPE is also the home of teachermagazine.org, TopSchoolJobs.org, Digital Directions, and the EPE Research Center, which produces the highly acclaimed Quality Counts, Technology Counts, and Diplomas Counts reports. EPEs Web site, edweek.org, is an award-winning source of up-to-the-minute news, information, and resources for educators, as well as in-depth research on issues preK12.

AN EDUCATION WEEK GUIDE

Copyright 2009 by Editorial Projects in Education. All rights reserved.
Published by Jossey-Bass
A Wiley Imprint
989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741www.josseybass.com

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Readers should be aware that Internet Web sites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifcally disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002.

Jossey-Bass also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-047-048209-4

FIRST EDITION

PB Printing 10~9~8~7~6~5~4~3~2~1

DURING A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN in which the candidates held few substantive debates about educational issues, Senator Barack Obamas campaign proposals stood out for their breadth, detail, and ambitious goals.

Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids dont have that chance, he said while accepting the Democratic nomination on August 28. Ill invest in early childhood education. Ill recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries, and give them more support. And in exchange, Ill ask for higher standards and more accountability.

The plans dont stop there. Mr. Obama proposed a tuition tax credit to college students who promise to teach in hard-to-staff schools or complete 100 hours of community service. He said he would change the No Child Left Behind Act to encourage states to use tests that measure students higher-order thinking skills. He wants the law to emphasize honoring good schools instead of identifying underperforming ones. He also said he would double the amount spent on educational research and development. In total, the proposals would add $18 billion in federal K12 spending and another $12 billion for higher education costs.

Leaders of the education policy community are eager to hear when and how Mr. Obamas administration will address the wideranging issues he outlined during the campaign. Which issues will be tackled first? What compromises will need to be made? And how will the economic recession and financial credit crisis affect the pace and scope of change? This book offers both news articles and opinion from the archives of Education Week to help inform the debates over these issues as the Obama administrations education policies take shape.

Part One of this book is organized around the main points of the Obama-Biden Education Planfrom investment in early childhood education to improving college affordability. Each chapter begins with a brief summary of the issue (drawn or synthesized from information on Obamas campaign site) and lists Obamas major proposals for change as stated by his campaign. This is followed by a Perspectives section, which is composed of material from the Education Week archivesrelevant articles, stories about innovative programs, and provocative opinion pieces (called Commentary). The Obama-Biden proposals covered a lot of groundso, for simplicitys sake, we combined some items. For example, the three parts of the early childhood education plan are addressed in Chapter 1, and college outreach/accessibility articles are combined with college finance articles in Chapter 8. Finally, the proposals to address the Dropout Crisis, expand high-quality after-school opportunities, and support English-language learners are divided between Chapters 5 and 6.

Part Two contains excerpts from two presidential advice projects. Chapter 9 is drawn from the Education Advice for Presidentelect Obama, a multimedia project produced by Learning Matters. Learning Matters collected advice for the president from teachers, administrators, policymakers, and students, and distributed it via podcasts, broadcasts, and postings on its website EdAdviceFor Obama.org. Due to space constraints, we could only include a fraction of the advice from people with diverse roles and perspectives in education. Chapter 10 summarizes key policy recommendations for the new administration from the National Academy of Education.