Four things you are guaranteed not to hear in Wednesday night’s SOTU:

• “While a little nerve-wracking for us around the White House, November elections by the people of New Jersey and Virginia solidified what will be an exciting opportunity for those states to break from the status quo and embrace the education reforms of their new governors and the incredibly bold leaders they have chosen to steer schools in their states. At the very least, McDonnell has kept Gerard so busy he hasn’t been able to bother me about DC scholarships.”

• “Frankly, my Education Secretary and I were disappointed with the results of special legislative sessions and bill proposals regarding charter schools. Our crack public affairs team spun things so R2TT would come out smelling like a rose, but, come on. Caps lifted when states weren’t even near them, Louisiana? Strengthening collective bargaining, Illinois? And two little guys out of New England - I’m talking to you Rhode Island and Connecticut - giving charter schools money you had already promised then taken away? Really? I hope that wasn’t used to support your applications. We went to Harvard, you know.”

• “The one real win in R2TT goes on the scoreboard for teachers. Check this out. In addition to $100 billion dollars to keep them employed through the stimulus, we figured out a way to take it a step further with R2TT and teacher evaluation methodology. You could drive a truck through the holes in state proposals regarding teachers. You should see some of the emails Arne sends me late at night with examples cut straight from the applications. It’s all I can do to keep from falling out of bed. I can’t wait for round two.”

• “I won’t be using a teleprompter this evening.”

(This post originally appeared on Politico’s The Arena)

The noise about President Obama’s impending speech to schoolchildren Tuesday is muffling the real issues.  While the President has every right to address any segment of the nation on any subject - and we all have the right to voluntarily listen or not - it’s both the way this thing was rolled out and the predicted content that should be most alarming to people - Republican or Democrat.

First, let’s talk about process, i.e. the rollout.  Rather than simply announce that the president was making a back-to-school speech, the policy/PR/other sundry staffers attached to this wrote and distributed superficial lesson plans as if they knew anything about education to begin with and as if this speech was indeed about the president, not the nation’s education crisis.  Telling teachers they should consider engaging students in a dialogue about how President Obama inspires them is ludicrous, not because some may not agree with him, but because it suggests this speech is after all about HIM.  To then go ahead and attack people for attacking the speech is like smoking and then getting outraged when someone says they smell smoke on you.

The speech massagers were clearly set about getting the president press. While I don’t doubt the president wants to give a great, meaningful speech to kids, his handlers messed up and have thwarted that potential now, not Bill O’Reilly or dozens of other known detractors.  The president’s “men” fell on their swords on this one, and President Obama should take full responsibility for that.

Second, the president’s predicted content which we’ll all now see prior thanks to the defensive posture the White House has had to take on this, should not just be about working hard (that’s what parents, teachers, school people and community leaders all over the country are saying to our kids hourly every day in their journey so far this year). It should be about what he - the president - and policymakers around the country can and should do to make schools work better for all children. He should tell them that while all schools try hard, some schools are just bad and we’re all working to change that. Obama should tell these kids that their academic achievement still ranks below most other industrialized countries, that they should have opportunities to make good choices; that they should urge their parents to get active in changing the way schools do business.

He should give a speech like he gave to the NAACP earlier this year, in which he said that there should be no excuses for failure, that some adults who aren’t doing well should be removed, and that we need to be willing to get rid of what doesn’t work and grow what does.

The president could also use this opportunity to applaud successful reform initiatives, be they public, private or charter-based, and put this notion of perestroika with the teachers unions to rest once and for all.

That would be a meaningful speech, and one only he could get away with at this point in our political history.  So please, to my friends in the media, to the President’s staunchest supporters and to the pundits - let’s not lose sight of just how important a speech like this can be, but keep your eye on the real issues, and whether and how he talks about them. Then cheer him or take him on all you want.

A challenge to the NAACP, African-American parents and all Americans…

To rousing applause, the president gave what was perhaps his best education speech to date last night, making it clear that “government programs alone…” won’t solve our problems, instead asking this community in particular to adopt  “a new mind set”, one that doesn’t tolerate failure.

“No excuses,” the president demanded to this audience. “No excuses.”

He has our thanks and our blessing for adopting the Reform Battle Cry.

“No Excuses” he said to the organization that, despite it’s name, has in reality done little in the last 20 years to support the kinds of real reforms that can indeed create a no excuses culture for poor children, children of color, all children in need.

And so the president’s impassioned and bold speech is particularly music to the ears of reformers of all stripes.

“I hope you don’t mind. I want to go on a little detour here about education (to rousing applause). In the 21st century when so many jobs will require a bachelors degree or more… a world class education is a prerequisite for success. You know what I’m taking about. There’s a reason the story of the civil rights movement was written in our schools.

“There is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child’s God given potential.

“Yet more than half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, the dream of a world class education is still being deferred…” (i.e. Achievement gap, dropouts, corridors of shame…)

“The state of our schools… is an American problem. Because if black and brown children cannot compete, America cannot compete.

“And let me say this, if Al Sharpton, Mike Bloomberg and Newt Gingrich can agree we have to solve the education problem, then that’s something all of America can agree we can solve.

“Those guys came into my office… and I kept on doing a double take. So that’s a sign of progress and a sign of the urgency of the education problem. All of us can agree that we have to offer every child in this country - every child - the best education the world has to offer… and all of us in government have to do our part by not only offering more resources, but by demanding more reform…”

Perhaps the evening’s least applause came when the President questioned the very conventional wisdom that has guided the thinking of the NAACP and other traditional civil rights groups: “We have to get past this old fashioned paradigm that somehow it’s just money,” he said to no applause.  “We have to get past the [idea] that it’s just reform, but no money,” he said as the applause picked up.

And President Obama acknowledged the flaws in some other conventional wisdom thinking, like, for example, not all early education programs are great and that parents should hold their children accountable for the highest of expectations, not just expect the schools and the government to do their jobs. “You can’t just contract out parenting…”

“We’ve got to say to our children, yes, if you’re African American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that someone in a wealthy suburb does not have to face. That’s not a reason to get bad grades, that’s not a reason to cut class, that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands - and don’t you forget that.

“You get that education. All those hardships will just make you stronger, better able to compete. Yes… we… can.”

A must listen. A must read. Thank you, Mr. President.

(Part II of The New No Excuses President will look at how Obama’s words fit a man who would normally endorse the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program…)

We seem to be more concerned today with the physical treatment of terrorists than the health and welfare of our most impoverished children. While the president works hard to compensate to our international friends for what he perceives as American arrogance, he is missing the biggest opportunity to show this nation really cares by permitting a small but successful lifeline for 2,000 Washington, DC poor children to die a slow death.

That lifeline is a scholarship program providing children from low-income homes a ticket to attend a private school of their choice, with the cost being borne by the government, in lieu of attending a neighborhood school near drug dens, pollution and barbed wire fences.

We have been talking to real people in Washington, DC about this program. We have gone to the same neighborhoods that produce the appalling statistics paraded daily in the news. Most residents do not know about this program. Those that do, do not understand why Congress — or anyone — would oppose it. There must be something else to it, they say? Why is it only 2,000 kids?

The reality is that they expect their leadership to know what’s good for kids. And most loyal DC citizens believe that, indeed, they have a friend in the White House. That may be the case on some issues, but not with respect to real education reform.

In the last few days alone, Mr. Obama has taken a pretty bad beating from friends and pundits in the news media. NPR/Fox News contributor Juan Williams has taken him to task. Staunch supporter and advisor, Kevin Chavous in partnership with Anthony Williams, former City Councilman and Mayor, respectively, challenged him to accept the program, and the notion of choice, for all needy children. Perhaps a little farther from home but just as sane was George Will’s column pointing out the one-two punch to the program thrown by Duncan. “Not content with seeing the program set to die after the 2009-10 school year, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (former head of Chicago’s school system, which never enrolled an Obama child) gratuitously dashed even the limited hopes of another 200 children and their parents.”

Bloggers are working overtime on this issue, and parents are out day by day in the city rallying and talking about how best to get Congress’ attention.

Wouldn’t it be great if they could be focused more appropriately on the needs of their families, their jobs or the next big community issue of concern? These people don’t have the hundreds of paid staff that the opponents of this program employ at various education groups, unions, and government offices. The time they spend on this is entirely their own – and on their own dime –  as they are so enormously frustrated and upset that this program is, for all intents and purposes, gone.

Their only hope is that Congress will take it up again in May, and maybe in the fall they will see the fruits of their labor. We will see.

I have many colleagues who insist that deep down, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is a real education reformer, and is a reflection of an administration that is reform-minded on critical education issues.  Because he hired this or that person, because he talks about charter schools, and because he told the press he thought that children currently in the DC scholarship program should be allowed to finish even if it is discontinued.  There are some who believe he’s “one of us.”

The Denver Post today, like Toto in The Wizard of Oz, pulls back the curtain on the image of Duncan as reformer to reveal some hard truths behind the talking points.  Like many of us, they wanted to know why a Congressionally mandated report on the DC voucher program - providing evidence of success - was released on a Friday, after Congress recessed, and as millions of Americans were leaving for their spring breaks.  Duncan denied knowing about the findings, though senior department officials have had a chance to review them since November.  Even if they deliberately kept it from the Secretary, it still begs the question as to why, knowing the Congress was moving to kill it, did he not ask where the study results were?  As the Denver Post columnist argues, Duncan discards the program as being too small to care about.  He dances around his opposition by advocating that kids already in the program continue — without demanding legislation that would allow that to happen, by the way.  Thus my colleagues’ “hopes” that he’ll come around, that reason will prevail.  They are so blinded by their dreams for this Administration that they find it impossible to believe its people could oppose something so good.

But put choice aside for a moment.  Real education reformers don’t blanket advocate for a longer school day and longer school year without noting that neither will make a difference if the school to which students are assigned lacks all rigor and accountability.  A real reformer would’ve used his clout as superintendent of his state’s largest public school system to demand that his state legislators lift the cap on charter schools before he left that state – perhaps even with the help of a sitting US Senator or two to pressure their state colleagues in return for recognition once they become president (Obama) or Appropriations chair (Durbin).

We all have hopes for our new leaders, but that doesn’t excuse them from making stupid remarks, or mistakes that hurt children.  And it doesn’t excuse us from failing to call them on the carpet.

Talk is cheap. Reformers should know better.