Seemingly always the last question asked in the political arena, President Obama was queried by 9-year-old James earlier during his Elkhart, IN town hall meeting.

James asked how the President planned to help our schools.

His laundry list of solutions:

- Rebuild schools to be state-of-the-art
- Train new teachers (and re-train existing ones)
- Reform how we do business
- High standards
- Better assessment
- NCLB needs to be re-worked in a more effective way

And last, he said, was to engage parents, noting that all the money in the world wouldn’t help education in this country until parents step up to the plate.

Greening our schools, building new facilities where none are needed and bailing out the teaching industry are supposed to lead to educational success?

How much do higher standards and student achievement cost?

How about focusing on what works:

- Federal accountability
- Transparency
- Charter schools
- School choice
- Teacher quality

Got Mandate?

(In light of the impending stimulus package making the rounds on Capitol Hill, the following is a riff on remarks made by President Barack Obama following a meeting with his education economic team. The original can be read in its entirety on the official White House blog.)

One point I want to make is that all of us are going to have responsibilities to get this economy education moving again. And when I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers Congress had given themselves the education system $20 billion $100 billion worth of bonuses in new spending — the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004 effectively doubling federal funding of education — at a time when most of these institutions were are teetering on collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them, and when taxpayers find themselves in the difficult position that if they don’t provide help that where they don’t have any other choices for educating their children, the entire system could come down on top of our heads if the next generation - indeed, this generation - can’t compete in a global economy — that is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful.

And part of what we’re going to need is for folks on Wall Street in the education BLOB who are asking for help to show some restraint accountability and show some discipline transparency and show some sense of responsibility. The American people understand that we’ve got a big hole that we’ve got to dig ourselves out of — but they don’t like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole even as they’re being asked to fill it up.

And so we’re going to be having conversations as this process moves forward directly with these folks on Wall Street the BLOB to underscore that they have to start acting in a more responsible accountable and transparent fashion if we are to together get this economy rolling again. There will be time for them to make profits an opportunity for those with rigorous programs to put them in play in the classroom, as is already seen in charter schools across the country, and there will be time for them to get bonuses quality teachers to excel and be compensated on their merits rather than their seniority — now is not that time. And that’s a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner Duncan to send to them — and Secretary Geithner Duncan already had to pull back one institution that had gone forward with a multimillion dollar jet plane purchase tenure protection contract at the same time as they’re receiving TARP ARRA money. We shouldn’t have to do that because they should know better. And we will continue to send that message loud and clear.

Having said that, I am confident that with the recovery package moving through the House and through the Senate, with the excellent work that’s already been done by Secretary Geithner in consultation with Larry Summers and Paul Volcker and other individuals education reformers in the trenches, that we are going to be able to set up a regulatory framework that allows accountability, transparency and choice to rights the ship and that gets us moving again. And I know the American people are eager to get moving again — they want to work be able to choose the best education for their children, be it in a conventional, charter or private school. They are serious about their responsibilities; I am, too, in this White House and I hope that the folks on Wall Street in the BLOB are going to be thinking in the same way.

(brought to you as a public service by M.O.M.S. - Mothers Opposed to Misappropriated Stimulus)

Last week, Greg Toppo of USA Today solicited advice on closing the achievement gap in American education for now President Barack Obama.

Here is what CER’s Jeanne Allen had to offer:

As a nation, we are ignorant of the crisis we face in education. Use your historic achievement to convince us that education’s failure is extensive and not limited to the streets of D.C., the hills of Appalachia or the banks of the Mississippi. Pepper your every remark with the reality we face. Implore us to action. Do for education what Al Gore did for the environment. … We mandate that children attend schools we know are failing. We say we are working on it, but continue to send them because … why??

Parents and educators of students in “better” schools are comforted by grade inflation. Policymakers believe failure is a result of bad homes and communities, not bad schools. The education establishment protects this lie and challenges every solution that could make schools great. They scorn data and ignore that our achievement is an international embarrassment.

Bold solutions take only months, not decades, to implement. We lack the will because we lack the understanding that we are in crisis.

Your words can change that.

The Education Trust’s Amy Wilkins, 2007 National Teacher of the Year Andrea Peterson and the Century Foundation’s Richard Kahlenberg weighed in with their thoughts as well.

What bit of advice would you offer the new Administration for achieving education across the board? How about for teachers and parents?

Please join in the conversation below…

The Center for Education Reform joins the millions in D.C. and elsewhere saluting our new President and hopes that when all the pomp and circumstance of the day has calmed he will apply his strong Inaugural words to the education of our nation’s students, for as he rightly pointed out, “our schools fail too many”.

(Photo: Bloomberg)

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter was ahead of the reform curve in media coverage back when it was not a popular thing to do. He’s been an avid fan of great models that provide at least some power to parents, and lots of freedom from bureaucracy. He understands the problems with unions. He even uses the language I put forth four years ago when talking about what was once called “traditional” public education and instead describes it as “conventional,” which is more to the point.

Alter’s column this week puts some heft behind the selection of Denver, CO superintendent Michael Bennet to be Ed Secretary. Could we really have another Bennett in that office? We could have a lot of fun with comparisons, but for now, we’re struck by the uncritical gaze that the otherwise keen Alter has given to both Bennet – and his interviewee of the week - Bill Gates.

Both in Alter’s estimation are reformers. He says Gates told him he believes in merit pay – and yet I’m not fully aware of any policy groups that strongly push for performance based pay changes in law which Gates is throwing money behind. The Gates Foundation is financially and morally supportive of the work of Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein and clearly Michael Bennet. But what superintendents can do is limited unless their state legislatures make it easier for them to free teachers from contract rules that limit pay and operational structures. Put in layman’s terms, it is state law that often dictates what supers do – state laws that teachers’ unions fiercely lobby for and against. We’re all for in-system reform – but one shouldn’t expect every super to be as heroic – or crazy – as reformers like Rhee, et al to make change. There simply aren’t enough of them out there.

More “Not So Fast (Part 2)”