Obama calls for raising the bar in U.S. education

mcclatchy newspapers

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Tuesday laid out his vision for changes to the education system, which includes a controversial plan to increase pay for high-performing teachers and money for states that raise pupil standards, track pupil progress and cut the drop-out rate.

Much of Obama’s speech to a group of Hispanic business leaders, his first address on education since taking office, focused not on detailing federal programs but on encouraging Americans to raise standards on their own.

He called for longer school days and school years, more charter schools and a greater effort to recruit promising candidates to the teaching profession, as well as a renewed commitment from parents to support their children’s education.

“It is time to prepare every child, everywhere in America, to out-compete any worker anywhere in the world,” Obama said. “It is time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career.

“America’s entire education system must once more be the envy of the world, and that’s exactly what we intend to do,” he said.

The plan echoed themes of Obama’s presidential campaign. It also built on recent remarks to a joint session of Congress, in which the president set a national goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020.

The president’s plan includes grants for states that improve early childhood education, push for uniform quality standards and improve efforts to help disadvantaged children.

It also promises to invest in innovative teacher-preparation models and to support drop-out prevention programs with federal money. It would also expand a federal program that increases the pay for teachers based on their performance.

As outlined in the federal budget proposal he released last month, the president also promised to raise the maximum Pell Grant for college students and to index it to inflation, and also to expand the Perkins Loan Program.

Leaders of one teachers union were heartened by Obama’s talk about education funding.

“What he showed is that, when he talks about policy, he’s also going to talk about putting resources there,” said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association.

Teachers unions are generally skeptical about merit-pay proposals, and Obama did not speak of merit pay in chiding Democrats who oppose the idea of “rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay.”