Ed in the Election: Obama’s master teachers and Romney’s higher-ed legacy

The Obama administration on Wednesday announced plans to create a corps of “master teachers” in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This teacher corps would start with 50 teachers across the nation and expand to reach 10,000 within four years, with members earning an extra $20,000 each annually in return for making a multi-year commitment. […]

The Obama administration on Wednesday announced plans to create a corps of “master teachers” in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). This teacher corps would start with 50 teachers across the nation and expand to reach 10,000 within four years, with members earning an extra $20,000 each annually in return for making a multi-year commitment.

The proposal comes with a $1 billion price tag; Congress will have to approve it in President Obama’s 2013 budget request. But the administration will set aside $100,000 of an existing fund immediately to help school districts identify and support high-performing STEM teachers. (TV host Bill Nye the Science Guy was also out on the campaign trail this week promoting the president’s education policies.)

“If America is going to compete for the jobs and industries of tomorrow, we need to make sure our children are getting the best education possible,” Obama said in a statement. “Teachers matter, and great teachers deserve our support.”

An aide to Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, told the Associated Press that there are already more than 80 teacher-quality programs funded by the government. “Republicans share the president’s goal of getting better teachers in the classroom,” said Kline spokeswoman Alexandra Sollberger. “However, we also value transparency and efficient use of taxpayer resources.”

Mitt Romney saw his education track record in Massachusetts scrutinized once again this week. The Associated Press examined the former governor’s plan for overhauling the state’s higher-education system, which called for privatizing three schools and closing six others, while restructuring the administration of public universities to help close a $3 billion state budget gap.

“But when Romney left office four years later, not a lot had changed,” the AP reported. “Romney’s restructuring plan was stymied by a Democratic-run state Legislature where many lawmakers were irked about his bitter feud with William Bulger, the University of Massachusetts president and one of the state’s most powerful and entrenched Democrats.”

In the end, Romney’s main legacy was a university scholarship program for students who score in the top 25 percent in their district on state standardized tests.

Romney also discussed education on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania this week. “We’re not providing our kids the education they need,” he said. “I want more choice in education. I will put our kids first and our unions behind, give the kids the best schools in the world.”

Ed in the election: Romney at the NAACP and Michelle Obama in Miami

Mitt Romney spoke at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People annual convention this week, where he tried to make the case that he was the best presidential candidate for African Americans. He promised, among other things, to close the country’s achievement gap and touted his education record as governor of Massachusetts, where […]

Mitt Romney (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Mitt Romney spoke at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People annual convention this week, where he tried to make the case that he was the best presidential candidate for African Americans. He promised, among other things, to close the country’s achievement gap and touted his education record as governor of Massachusetts, where test scores rose for all demographics during his tenure, but particularly for minority students.

Romney also discussed working with the Black Legislative Caucus when he vetoed a bill that would have capped the number of charter schools in the state.

“Charter schools are so successful that almost every politician can find something good to say about them,” Romney said. Indeed, the charter school movement has found supporters on both sides of the aisle – including President Obama. But research on how well they work is not conclusive; some studies indicate they do no better than traditional public schools.

And, although Massachusetts indisputably improved its academic performance under Romney, some argue that he was unable to form the partnerships to make major policy changes.

“There is a core movement in Massachusetts around accountability and responsibility, and Mitt Romney was a vocal advocate for that,” Hardin Coleman, dean of the School of Education at Boston University, told the Washington Times, in an article that looks at Romney’s education successes and failures as governor. “But he certainly wasn’t new in that field. He spoke to those issues as governor, but what is commonly understood here in Massachusetts is that he was not effective in building coalitions in bringing [his policy objectives] to bear.”

Michelle Obama in Pueblo, Colorado (Photo by Christopher Dilts for Obama for America/via Flickr)

First Lady Michelle Obama came under fire this week for plans to hold a campaign event at a Miami high school, where students are out for the summer. Two Republican school board members said holding a political event at a Barbara Goleman Senior High in Miami Lakes was “inappropriate,” according to The Miami Herald, and asked that the event be canceled.

“The use of public schools whose only focus should be to educate our children for political gain is downright wrong,” school board member Renier Diaz de la Portilla said in a statement. “Don’t these liberals have boundaries? Our schools are places for learning not places for politicking.”

The event was allowed to take place as planned, however. School board attorney Walter Harvey explained to the Herald that the Obama campaign was “essentially renting the facility” and that the district couldn’t discriminate against requests from political campaigns.

Ed in the Election: Romney advisor talks unions

Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s top education adviser, Rod Paige, gave an interview to The Root this week. A former Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, Paige talked about the role of the federal government in education, school choice and teachers unions, but made it clear that he was not speaking for the campaign. “I think […]

Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s top education adviser, Rod Paige, gave an interview to The Root this week. A former Secretary of Education under George W. Bush, Paige talked about the role of the federal government in education, school choice and teachers unions, but made it clear that he was not speaking for the campaign.

“I think that the teacher unions represent one of the most damaging burdens on reform initiatives to improve schools,” Paige told The Root. “There’s an important role for teachers unions, but they have grown to a point where they are too powerful. And that is a detriment to school reform. School reform is not going to happen, because they are not going to support anything that significantly changes the status quo. They are only going to support the marginal issues.”

In a week full of Supreme Court decisions, education was once again largely overlooked on the campaign trail. But that doesn’t mean schools won’t be affected by news from Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature legislation mandating all citizens get healthcare coverage or pay a fine, could be connected to educational outcomes, suggests an Education Week blog post that cites several studies.

Romney has vowed to repeal the healthcare law should he be elected.

Also this week, Congress reached an agreement to prevent the doubling of interest rates on student loans, from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. Both Romney and Obama have been vocal about the need to freeze those interest rates. The compromise is included in a transportation bill expected to pass both houses easily.

While interest rates would stay the same, limitations would be placed on how long students are eligible for subsidized loans—up to six years in a four-year degree program, or three years in a two-year program. Right now, eligibility is not based on how many years a student has been enrolled in a program.

Ed in the Election: Agreement on vouchers and stalemate over student loans

College Board, the group best known for administering the SAT, this week launched “Don’t Forget Ed,” an effort to make presidential candidates pay more attention to education, by setting up 857 empty school desks on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The desks represent the number of students who drop out of high school each […]

College Board, the group best known for administering the SAT, this week launched “Don’t Forget Ed,” an effort to make presidential candidates pay more attention to education, by setting up 857 empty school desks on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The desks represent the number of students who drop out of high school each hour of each school day, according to a 2007 Education Week statistic. (Although, as the Associated Press reports, that figure may be off.)

The organization also gathered signatures in an online petition directed at the presidential candidates. The petition reads, “If you want my support, I need to hear more from you about how you plan to fix the problems with education. And not just the same old platitudes. I want to know that you have real, tangible solutions, and that once in office, you’re ready to take serious action. I’ll be watching your acceptance speech at your party’s convention.” Over 22,000 people have signed so far.

It was still a quiet week for education on the campaign trail, though, with most of the action happening at Capitol Hill. President Obama and his administration struck a deal with Congress to keep a Washington, D.C., school voucher program alive.  The presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney and other Republicans have criticized Obama for trying to cut funding for the Opportunity Scholarship Program, which allows low-income students in the District to apply for scholarships to be used at private schools.

The deal, worked out with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), requires an increase in “the current enrollment of about 1,615 to approximately 1,700 students for the coming year to allow for a statistically valid evaluation of the program,” according to a written statement by Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Monday. He clarified the next day that this did not mean the Obama administration had changed its position on vouchers, which it opposes.

Obama has also been battling Congress on student loans this week. If an agreement is not made by July 1, the student loan interest rate will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. Obama and Republican leaders both say they would like to freeze the interest rate, but have not agreed on how to pay for it. Romney has also said he supports freezing it at 3.4 percent.

“We’re 10 days away from nearly 7.5 million students seeing their loan rates double because Congress hasn’t acted,” Obama said in remarks to a group of students at the White House. “This should be a no-brainer. It should not be difficult. It should have gotten done weeks ago.”

Republicans have said that they are willing to find a solution, but say the administration is being uncooperative. As the Washington Post reports: “In Capitol Hill, GOP leaders complain that Obama’s public remarks are at odds with his administration’s refusal to engage in serious negotiations on how to pay for $6 billion in subsidies for the federal Stafford loans. Republicans say that they are ready to make a deal and have offered proposals to Democrats but that the White House has blown them off in favor of Obama’s making public speeches.”

Ed in the Election: Obama’s pseudo Dream Act and Romney’s voucher proposal

Each week leading up to the 2012 Election, HechingerEd will feature a post rounding up the latest on what the candidates are saying and doing about education – and what others think of their plans. President Obama today bypassed a stalled Congress to make a significant change in immigration policy, announcing he would stop the […]

Each week leading up to the 2012 Election, HechingerEd will feature a post rounding up the latest on what the candidates are saying and doing about education – and what others think of their plans.

President Obama today bypassed a stalled Congress to make a significant change in immigration policy, announcing he would stop the deportation of certain young undocumented immigrants by executive order. As New York Magazine put it: “Obama basically just passed the DREAM Act himself.”

The DREAM Act would create an opportunity for permanent residency for illegal aliens who meet certain requirements:  They must have moved to the the United States before they turned 16 and be younger than 30, have been here for at least five continuous years, have no criminal history and pose no national security threat, and have graduated from a U.S. high school, earned a GED or been accepted into a post-secondary institution. The bill has been introduced in Congress each year since 2001.

Unlike the DREAM Act proposal, the president’s order would not grant legal status. Instead, immigrants who meet the eligibility requirements will be “immune from deportation.” The DREAM Act would allow students to apply for federal student loans, a provision that has won the bill many supporters among educators. But under Obama’s order, it seems likely that these students would still be on their own to pay for college.

Obama started off his week with a focus on education in his weekly address, in which he argued that the federal government should act to prevent more teacher layoffs.  “When states struggle, it’s up to Congress to step in and help out,” Obama said. “In 2009 and in 2010, we provided aid to states to help keeps hundreds of thousands of teachers in the classroom. But we need to do more.”

The presumed Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, dove into education policy in late May, releasing a white paper about his education policies and delivering a speech covering much of the same ground. The hallmark of Romney’s plan is a proposed voucher-like system linking $25 billion in federal funds to low-income and special education students so they would be able to attend any school – traditional public, private or charter – in any zip code.

Voucher advocates often say low-performing schools, faced with competition from private schools, will force improvements in order to avoid losing students. But although some research has found benefits for the students who receive vouchers, skeptics have pointed out that there is little research to demonstrate that vouchers help public schools get better.

As the New York Times reported, even Margaret Spellings, former education secretary under George W. Bush and previously an informal adviser to Romney, has doubts about the plan. Spellings stopped advising Romney after he “rejected strong federal accountability measures” in his education proposal, according to the Times.

“I have long supported and defended and believed in a muscular federal role on school accountability,” Spellings told the Times. “Vouchers and choice as the drivers of accountability – obviously that’s untried and untested.”

Andy Rotherham, a columnist for Time, argues that Romney’s plan is hardly as revolutionary as the candidate has portrayed it. Rotherham described it as “puny,” adding: “This latest round of voucher-pseudonym talk probably won’t amount to much. That’s because school choice is a state-by-state game, not a federal one.”

Fact-checking Romney’s claims in his education speech this week

Likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney focused on education this week, releasing a 35-page plan outlining his education platform and giving a speech on education to the Latino Coalition of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. Below, we scrutinize some of Romney’s claims. Statement: “Among developed countries, the United States comes in 14th of […]

Mitt Romney (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

Likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney focused on education this week, releasing a 35-page plan outlining his education platform and giving a speech on education to the Latino Coalition of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. Below, we scrutinize some of Romney’s claims.

Statement:

“Among developed countries, the United States comes in 14th of 34 in reading, 17th of 34 in science, and an abysmal 25th out of 34 in math.”

The Facts: Needs more context

Romney was referring to the results of the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which was given to 15-year-olds around the globe. The United States’ performance is often cited by politicians, including President Barack Obama, as an indicator that the country’s education system is doing poorly. But the results may not be so black and white, according to a summary of the results by the National Center for Education Statistics. In reading, for instance, although the United States was ranked 14th among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, only six countries had scores that were significantly higher than that of the U.S. The remaining seven countries ranked ahead of us had scores that, statistically speaking, were indistinguishable from America’s. In science, though, 12 OECD countries had scores that were measurably higher, and in math that number was 17. Out of the 64 countries that took part in the assessment, nine had significantly higher average scores in reading, 18 in science and 23 in math.

Statement:

“After three months, students [in Washington, D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program] could already read at levels 19 months ahead of their public-school peers.”

The Facts: It takes years, not months

The Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), started in 2004, allows students in Washington, D.C. to apply for scholarships to cover private-school tuition. The Obama administration has repeatedly tried to cut funding for the program—something Romney opposes. Romney’s claim here is off by a factor of 12; it actually took three years for students to make the gains he was speaking about. A 2009 study by the U.S. Department of Education showed that one group of students—those enrolled in the program for three years—had the equivalent of 14 to 19 months of extra learning in reading compared to their public-school peers. For students enrolled for shorter periods of time, the gains ranged from three to five months of extra learning. And as for math performance, there was no significant difference among program participants and their public-school peers. A 2010 study concluded that there was no “evidence that the OSP affected student achievement. On average, after at least four years students who were offered (or used) scholarships had reading and math test scores that were statistically similar to those who were not offered scholarships.” The same study did find, however, that students who received the scholarships were more likely than non-recipients to graduate from high school.

Statement:

“The two major teachers unions take in $600 million each year. That’s more revenue than both of the political parties combined. In 2008, the National Education Association spent more money on campaigns than any other organization in the country. And 90 percent of those funds went to Democrats.”

The Facts: Numbers may be off a bit

It’s difficult to quantify how much the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) take in annually—each has many state and local affiliates that file their own 990 forms. In 2010, the NEA reported over $352 million in revenue on its tax filings. The AFT brought in $162.7 million. Historically, both organizations have had a large political presence and have favored Democratic candidates. According to OpenSecrets.org, which labels the political action committees (PACs) of both unions as “heavy hitters,” the NEA did top the list of national donors in 2007-2008, spending $56,228,408. The bulk of this money—$53.5 million—was spent at the state level, and about $36.7 million of it went to specific ballot initiatives rather than particular candidates. In 2008, the NEA’s PAC gave 91 percent of its money to Democrats. When it comes to total NEA donations, however—including to other PACs, as well as to candidates from both parties—Romney was slightly off: 86 percent of the NEA’s money went to Democrats.

What will happen with education in the 2012 presidential election?

As the Republican presidential primary rolls on to Nevada, many are already looking toward the general election, discussing what the candidates will have to do to win the White House. A panel held on Wednesday, February 1st, at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning public-policy think tank in Washington, D.C., discussed what role education will […]

As the Republican presidential primary rolls on to Nevada, many are already looking toward the general election, discussing what the candidates will have to do to win the White House. A panel held on Wednesday, February 1st, at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning public-policy think tank in Washington, D.C., discussed what role education will likely play in politics during this election year. The full session can be viewed here. Some highlights included:

• Regardless of who wins the Republican presidential nomination, Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, predicted that the nominee won’t attack President Barack Obama on education. “The mojo for education policy has strangely shifted back to governors around the country,” he said. “We’re going to start to see governors again be the drivers of most of what’s happening in education with a lot of focus led by the federal government for sure. But it’s going to become very difficult to argue that the Obama administration and [U.S. Education Secretary Arne] Duncan have been obnoxious with their use of the bully pulpit.”

• Education will be more important in this election than it has in the two previous ones, and a growing number of people think public education in the country isn’t on the right track, according to David Winston, president of The Winston Group, a D.C.-based strategy and message design firm. Education is seen as being closely linked to jobs and the economy, which are the most important issues for the majority of Americans. “What you’re going to watch is the candidates try to figure out this economic side in terms of this discussion. I think for virtually all them, it’s a new paradigm in terms of how to look at it,” he said. “You’re going to watch a lot of candidates sort of make it up as they go along … since there’s no clear track record.”

• The existence of the Tea Party has changed, and will continue to change, the way education is talked about on Capitol Hill. The group has vehemently opposed things like the Race to the Top competition—a federal grant initiative that rewarded states for making certain reforms—for taking too much power away from states. “The Tea Party has pushed the debate of the federal role and overreaching,” said Peter Cunningham, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education. “The whole debate about what the federal government should do and shouldn’t do is an important one, but it’s not the most important one. The most important one is what’s happening to kids.”