Face The State Fact Check
Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama's Wednesday visit to Thorton's Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts, a public option school, has been met with great fanfare. While his speech may have inspired many, how solid were his facts and how specific were his policy recommendations?
What follows are key, selected quotes from Obama’s speech, followed by brief analysis.
Obama said: "From the moment our children step into a classroom, the single most important factor in determining their achievement is not the color of their skin or where they come from; it's not who their parents are or how much money they have. It's who their teacher is."
FTS: Obama is right to avoid the common myth of helplessness that perpetuates the notion that kids from poor and ethnic minority families cannot be educated to the same potential as others. Backing his claim, research consistently shows that teacher quality is the single greatest determinant of student learning gains.
Obama’s proposals like the Service Scholarship and Teacher Residence programs may address some part of the shortage, yet he avoids mention of solutions that promise to do more—namely, truly streamlined alternative pathways for professionals to be licensed for classroom instruction, greater flexibility to remove ineffective veteran teachers, and progress toward overhauling compensation systems that reward mediocrity and career-squatting.
Obama said: "And if teachers acquire additional knowledge and skills to serve students better - if they consistently excel in the classroom - that work can be valued and rewarded as well."
FTS: This statement is a close paraphrase from the education issue page of Obama’s website. It is also the closest he comes to promoting true compensation reform, but the call for rewarding “knowledge and skills” is far from radical. Many states already give bonuses to teachers who earn additional credentials like union-approved National Board certification, a process that shows a weak relationship to improved student achievement outcomes.
The tepid remarks are reminiscent of Obama’s July 2007 speech to the National Education Association, when he promised to work with union leaders to craft measurements that could be used to determine teacher pay awards.
Obama said: "Recently, 87 percent of Colorado teachers said that testing was crowding out subjects like music and art."
FTS: Obama is referring to a January 2007 survey sponsored by U.S. Senator Ken Salazar, D-Colorado, to use in the No Child Left Behind Act reauthorization debate. According to Salazar’s office, 1,635 teachers responded, but no indication was given whether the survey sample was identified randomly or was somehow self-selected. It is important to note that Colorado had instituted its own regiment of CSAP assessments years before NCLB, and that NCLB only attached somewhat stricter federal funding consequences to testing results.
Obama said: "Forcing our teachers, our principals, and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong. Promising high-quality teachers in every classroom and then leaving the support and the pay for those teachers behind is wrong."
FTS: Obama’s implied solution is a further increase in federal education spending. According to the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, U.S. Department of Education grew K-12 expenditures from $27.3 billion in 2001 to $38 billion in 2006, a 40 percent jump. Between 1970 and 2000, total per-pupil spending in the U.S. and Colorado on education doubled in real dollars, yet national achievement results remained flat.
While schools need some amount of operating dollars, peer-reviewed research consistently shows no connection between increased overall funding and student success. A recent scientific survey also demonstrated that American adults dramatically underestimate how much their local schools spend per pupil.
Obama said: "As President, I will offer a $4,000 tax credit that will cover two-thirds of the tuition at an average public college and make community college completely free."
FTS: Obama’s proposal for college-level tax credits only serves to highlight his lack of proposals to expand (or even to protect) tax credits or other choice-based opportunities at the K-12 level. Absent from both his Thornton speech and his education webpage are any mention of school choice, except for a passing reference to moving beyond the debate of “vouchers versus the status quo.” He talks about parental involvement in education but ignores the ultimate form of involvement: empowerment to choose a new school. He offers no mention of Colorado’s successful history with limited public school choice, including many of its charter schools.
Conclusion
The underlying irony of Obama’s Wednesday speech is his grasp of the evidence of failure (e.g., dropout rates, low testing proficiency among certain student populations) led mostly to calls for ideas that have brought our system to where it is today. More increases in federal funding, more unproven programs, and complete avoidance of a promising major strategy to remedy the existing shortcomings of public education.
Beneath Obama’s repackaged rhetoric offers little evidence and little hope for change that could really benefit the neediest of our nation’s schoolchildren.