Tag Archive for 'Barack Obama'

Saving Catholic Schools

Published by Robert Pondiscio on April 21, 2009 in Educational Policy. 3 Comments

The disappearance of Catholic schools from America’s inner cities is ”a national education crisis that needs a national response,” argue Checker Finn and Andy Smarick in a Washington Post op-ed.  To their credit, Finn’s Fordham Foundation has been a long-time, loud and too often lonely voice urging action to save Catholic schools.  They write:

Most urban Catholic schools were originally built to educate the children of European immigrants; today, they mostly serve poor African American and Latino students. With their long track record of successfully educating ill-served populations, these schools can play a central role in the nation’s effort to expand educational opportunity and reduce the achievement gap. But not if they disappear.

Reformers love scale, so try this comparison:  KIPP runs 66 public schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia serving just over 16,000 students.   Catholic schools serving 25 times that number of  children closed down from 2000 to 2006–nearly 1,200 faith-based urban schools closed, serving 425,000 students.  And these are schools that produce results.  Diane Ravitch recently noted that in New York City, the four-year graduation rate at Catholic high schools is 99.5%, with 98% of high school graduates enrolling in college.  Finn and Smarick want the Obama administration to “help turn this fatal tide” of Catholic school closings.

Stimulus funds could be used to shore up schools on the brink, provide assistance to their teachers and administrators, or expand and replicate promising local strategies. The president could support education tax credits or scholarships, which would help needy students and stabilize school enrollments. By simply underscoring his support and concern for these schools, he would indicate the bipartisan nature of this issue, thereby providing cover to others eager to act but wary of the political implications.

It’s fashionable (and facile) for antagonists in ed policy debates to frame arguments in terms of who’s on the side of children vs. who’s concerned about adults.  Here are schools successfully serving two million kids.  Who’s on their side?  And before one argues that there are church/state issues here, and that public dollars must not go to religious schools, remember that’s exactly what happens every time a Pell Grant pays a student’s tuition at Georgetown, BC, or Notre Dame.

This just in:  Eduwonk likes Catholic schools “but remains unpersuaded on the need for a public bailout of Catholic schools absent a lot of reciprocal accountability and transparency.”

Patriotism in the Age of Obama

Published by Robert Pondiscio on April 16, 2009 in No category. 5 Comments

Barack and Michele Obama seem to be exemplary parents, writes Checker Finn in the latest Gadfly.  But (and you knew there was a but coming) he wonders how the Obamas see the value of patriotism. ”How are their daughters being taught to view the United States?” he asks. ”More important, what examples are the Obamas setting for fifty million other American kids and their teachers and parents?”

Is America, in their eyes, ‘the last best hope’? A place that doesn’t always live up to its ideals but comes closer than anyplace else? A place worth defending from all enemies, foreign and domestic? And is that something they believe is important for grownups to impart to children? Or do they think it’s the proper role of parents and teachers to emphasize the country’s shortcomings?

Finn is not questioning Obama’s patriotism, but wondering aloud about where the post-Vietnam generation of leaders places patriotism in the pantheon of civic virtues.  It’s a provocative question with lingering resonance.

“When the country chose Barack Obama over John McCain, it opted for a member of that crowd and for the youth and change and energy that come with it,” Finn concludes.  “Well and good. The President certainly has his hands full on many fronts and one can only wish him well. Nobody expects him to be the national K-12 curriculum director, too. But he and his wife are inevitable role models. How he views America matters in a thousand ways, including–though surely not limited to–how our children and teachers will view it.”

Obama’s Inauguration and the Limits of Symbolism

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 20, 2009 in Opinion. 14 Comments

“We will achieve a just and prosperous society only when our schools ensure that everyone commands enough shared knowledge to communicate effectively with everyone else.” — E.D. Hirsch, Jr., The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them

President Barack Obama spoke to two different groups of Americans today.  One group understood the deep historical significance of the words in his inaugural address and grasped fully the moment in history to which they were bearing witness. A second group, no doubt moved and caught up in the excitement of seeing an African-American take the oath of office, saw merely an historic “first.”  And that’s a shame.

“It’s an amazing event for our students who are under 18 and haven’t fully formed their consciousness,” one school administrator told the Los Angeles Times. ”They see Obama and say, ‘This is a president who looks like me, I can be president.’”  It’s a true and earnest observation that has been made many times in the last few months.  But as uplifting as that sentiment is, it’s bittersweet to consider that many students–indeed, many Americans–lack a full appreciation of the moment and their new President’s inaugural address.  President Obama’s speech was rich in historical, literary, and biblical references, lending meaning, resonance and emotional weight to his words.  Yet these allusions were almost certainly unfamiliar to many of those watching. 

To have endured an education where history was a second-tier subject was to be left to wonder today: Who were these people Obama mentioned, who “toiled for us in sweatshops and settled the West?” Who were these people who “endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth?”  If you were not taught our nation’s rich history, then the President’s description of those who “packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life” may have failed to move you.   If you do not know what happened at Concord, Gettysburg, Normandy and Khe Sahn, then the sacrifices of those who “fought and died for us” in those places is lost upon you.  As uncomfortable as it is to consider, if our children are ignorant of that history then at least some measure of that sacrifice was, alas, in vain.   

President Obama’s inaugural address placed us — all of us — in the flow of history.  With its references to the “rights of man,” our “common defense,” ideals that “light the world,” and a generation that “faced down communism and fascism,” the address was surely met with either nods or blank stares.  If our children do not know the events and phrases to which Obama referred, they cannot fully appreciate the significance of this moment or even what this President is asking of them.   How is it possible for them to be “the keepers of this legacy” — why should they value it and seek to keep it at all? — unless they understand the  thing they are being asked to keep?  Obama’s most poignant observation was that “a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”  How many of his younger listeners fully appreciate the price that has been paid to make this moment possible?  How many of our children, instead of seeing mere novelty, comprehend fully and viscerally the improbable closing of a historical loop they have just witnessed?  A black man took the oath of office with his hand on a bible belonging to the President who signed the Emancipation Proclamation.  He turned to deliver his inaugural address facing the site where another great American dreamed out loud of the day when his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. He then delivered his inaugural address to millions of Americans who had rendered that very judgement.   

It in no way diminishes the significance of this day to observe with a touch of sadness that too many of our nation’s children — especially those who look with pride at this President who looks like them — were able to appreciate this day only on a superficial level.  Too many can appreciate the symbolism of the moment, but no more. Some saw history.  Others, poorer by far, saw a symbolic ”first.” 

President Obama called upon us today to enter a “new era of responsibility.”  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.  For educators, perhaps the noblest duty that we might accept ”not grudgingly but seize gladly” is to ensure that in the very near future our nation’s children are able to judge this President not by the color of his skin, or even the content of his character, but by the full weight of his words.

Fish or Cut Bait

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 8, 2008 in No category. 2 Comments

“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well, it were done quickly.”

If I were Obama, I’d take Macbeth’s advice and hurry up and pick my education secretary already, if only to put an end to the nonstop “reformers vs. traditionalists” drumbeats that are growing by intensity day by day.  The will he or won’t he (pick a “reformer” or go old school) has now been the subject of this David Brooks column, this piece in The New Republic, and this story in the Associated Press in the last three days alone.  Perhaps the pick is someone both sides will be equally pleased with – or upset by.  But if you’re planning on alienating a segment of your amen corner, why prolong the agony?  Let the healing begin.

Obama Elementary School

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 22, 2008 in School News. 0 Comments

A Long Island school is changing its name to honor President-elect Barack Obama–apparently a national first.  Hempstead’s school board has voted unanimously to rename its Ludlum Elementary School as Barack Obama Elementary School.  The school’s enrollment is about two-thirds Hispanic and one-third African-American (Test scores, as reported by greatschools.net look very solid).  Long Island’s Newsday reports:

A Web search finds no mention of other schools or public facilities in the United States named for Obama, though such moves are being advocated in Calumet City, Ill., and Portland, Ore. In Antigua, the prime minister has said he’s taking measures to have the island’s highest peak renamed Mount Obama, according to the AP. A school in Kogelo, Kenya, birthplace of Obama’s father, was named for the president-elect after he was elected senator.

Handmaid Ladling Norm?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 20, 2008 in Educational Policy. 1 Comment

For months, Democrats have been squabbling back and forth as to what Barack Obama really believes on education.   Is he a reformer?  Is he for school choice, charters, accountability?  Or is he a traditional democrat, who will echo the teacher’s unions positions on NCLB, merit pay and other issues?

The whole ”reformers vs. status quo” meme is a bit tired and something of a false dichotomy.  You can favor accountability and still think NCLB is doing harm.  There are legitimate reasons to oppose merit pay without being labeled a defender of the status quo.  That said, those who thought Barack Obama was something new in the Democratic firmament are having an “uh-oh” moment with word that Linda Darling Hammond is Obama’s choice as his lead education advisor. 

Fordham’s Mike Petrilli wonders if Obama will kill education refrom.  Liam Julian, writing in National Review Online, looks at the appointment of the “self-described advocate of progressive education” and concludes that “so far, it seems, tradition trumps change.”  American Prospect blogger Dana Goldstein calls the selection of LDH a conservative choice.

Not ideologically conservative, but rather, conservative in terms of what it says about Obama’s plans for education. Groups like Democrats for Education Reform – which favor charter schools and merit pay — have been hoping for Obama to embrace their agenda. And indeed, early in the primaries, Obama was booed at a teachers’ union event for saying he supported merit pay. But since he clinched the nomination, Obama’s statements on education have been more circumspect. The appointment of Darling-Hammond, a teacher quality expert who opposes merit pay and is more critical than supportive of NCLB, signals that Obama wishes to avoid a fight with the unions. He’ll spend his political capital on energy and health care instead.

My internet time waster of choice is the anagram server.  Type in a name and in seconds it will summon up every conceivable acronym.  It’s great for cheating at Scrabble.  On a lark, I typed in Linda Darling Hammond.  At the top of the list, it came up with:  “Handmaid Ladling Norm.”

Time will tell.

Public or Private?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 10, 2008 in Education Leadership. 2 Comments

Everyone and their brother is weighing in on where the future First Daughters should go to school once their dad moves to Washington to start his new job.  Jay Mathews of the Washington Post wisely avoids grandstanding, noting that school choice is very personal.  He assumes the Obama girls will find their way to Georgetown Day School, “because of its similarity to their current school, its historic role as the city’s first racially integrated school and the presence of Obama senior legal adviser Eric H. Holder Jr. on its board of trustees.”  However he notes there is a viable public school, Strong John Thomson, a stone’s throw from the White House.

Meet the principal, Gladys Camp, and you understand why Thomson parents think the Obamas ought to check it out. Dr. Camp, as everyone calls her, is a legend. In the past two years, she has won awards from the National Association of Elementary School Principals and this newspaper as the best school leader in the city….Sixty-nine percent of Thomson’s 355 students are from low-income families. Forty percent are Hispanic, 34 percent black, 22 percent Asian American and 5 percent white. That demographic mix often means remedial instruction and little enrichment, but parents say the school offers a feast of music, art and foreign languages as good as what they would find in a private school. 

The last President to send his kids to public school?  Jimmy Carter.  “Thomson is close to capacity,” writes Uncle Jay, “but Camp said she would have room after the holidays for a fifth-grader and a second-grader transferring from the Midwest.”