After less than a year in office I’m not quite ready to pass final judgment on Obama’s presidency. As I pointed out above, I like where he’s headed. Let’s also not forget, the moron who preceded Obama had eight years to screw things up and he did a hell of a job of it.

Oh. And America is bankrupt, much like Europe in the 1930s. Get ready for the inflation.

Obama has been in office less than a year. He’s started on national standards/assessments, a very positive step, especially if they’re at all close to what Core Knowledge has produced. He’s also close to federalizing a quantitative measure to determine the effectiveness of our public school teachers. Finally the crapolla, everyone’s doing a splendid job, subjective evaluations look as though we could be looking at them in the rear view mirror real soon. That’s a good thing.

He’s started to address climate change by issuing fuel standards for US autos that have the attention of the auto industry. He’s attempting to dialogue with rogue nations, reason with them if possible as opposed to calling them names (“Axis of Evil”). I believe he’s taking the correct steps toward reigniting diplomatic ties with Cuba, almost fifty years declared an un-nation by our past nine US administrations.

He’s on the precipice of national health care for all with a public option, which hopefully will bring the price of our health care in line with the rest of our economy by incorporating competition into the marketplace.

Personally, I’ve never been a huge fan of NASA or the billions spent on the race to outer space. I’m sure there have been major benefits gained from the program but I’m not aware any that have dramatically altered my life. Tang? Come on. The Cold War is over. Hello! The Soviet Union is not getting a manned space craft to the moon before us and will also not be polluting the atmosphere with some form of neutron bomb aimed exclusively at our shores.

Yes, things such as climate change and immigration need work. Give him time to get his initial priorities established first. Remember, health care, education, energy.

Oh, and the economy. Yes, unemployment is brutal, foreclosures and bankruptcies are off the wall, and not much in this arena looks rosy. He’s one person, dealing with an entrenched gridlock-minded rival party, not to mention people in his own party who don’t agree with him on everything.

“At this moment, change has come to America.” Well, it’s coming slowly, but it DOES look like it’s coming.

BTW, for a national model on education, all he has to do is come to Massachusetts. But he better hurry because there are loonies out there looking to change all that.

The common core state standards initiative will not succeed any more than Comprehensive School Reform, School to Work, No Child Left Behind, New American Schools or the new education policy vision unveiled today by the Wall Street Journal. We are the masters of our own fate. The solution to the problems Checker laments are staring us in the face. Innovation is not more of the same or incrementally building on what works here or there. These strategies or not practical and will never get to scale.

The solutions is simply connecting the political, technical and process dots so that when Checker and our other national experts agree precisely on the “what to teach,” i.e. the new common core state standards, as a set of teachable learning objective that they already have in hand processes to ensure that the our four million classroom teachers will be teaching with a curriculum that is ‘certified’ by our chief state school officers, our district superintendents, our building principal and our teacher’s representatives as precisely aligned with those learning objectives.

Once that straight-forward and easily accomplished task is completed then the other elements of an effective, transparent, student achievement-focused education system for the U.S. will be possible. Until then, we will continue to pour billions of dollars and millions of teaching hours into a system that has no idea of what it expects its students to learn or if the teaching material in the classroom are actually aligned to the learning objectives, and we will get the same unacceptable student achievement result.

Checker can cap his distinguished years of service by letting go of the failures past policy have created and turning his energies and opening his great mind to a scientific and practical reform solution. And, as Checker embraces these ‘and it’s about time’ effective options, I hope he invites Sec. Duncan and his team of policy innovators to join him. The Obama Administration and our Congress are about to pour billions more through the same, ineffective state education agency and school district processes and politics that have brought us to the heart of education ‘darkness’ Checker so vividly describes.