If Law A guaranteed 100 percent student proficiency, but was only10 percent implementable, and Law Y shot for only 80 percent student proficiency but was 80 percent implementable, which would you prefer?
Interesting piece at The New Republic by Kevin Carey (Ed Sector) about the Obama Administration's tweaks to NCLB. Basically, takes the moon-shot "everyone achieves by 2014" mandate away while empowering teachers and schools and states to do the things NCLB didn't properly address, like helping students meet stable standards, teacher quality, authentic school turnaround.
Meanwhile, Carey casts a plan among some Republicans to back away from NCLB as long-term retreat from federal spending obligations masking as nostalgia for the good old days when the Feds kept their hands out of the schools.
As far as Obama is concerned, while I never worshiped him as The Second Coming, I voted for him, would do it again, and will do it again (short of some major shift in the political landscape leading to a sudden embrace of Mitt Romney ... oh wait, yeah, I'm voting for Obama). I share many reservations about his term, including some with the still-cohering Occupy Wall Street movement.
But he has initiated many "tweaks" that could have positive long-term impacts, like changing funding formulas for usually earmark-riddled energy and transportation sectors, this NCLB work, RTTT, and so on. In that sense he has been more manager than leader--despite the oratory skills we all know. Is it enough to be a President of "tweaks"? No, and that may spell doom for him come next November. But worth watching the long-term impacts.
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