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by Kim Clark
President Obama's plan will face the same obstacles that have hindered previous attempts to fix schools
America has tried many strategies over the decades to reverse the slow, steady decline in its public schools. Few of these have delivered real results. The "classrooms without walls" of the 1970s, for example, were supposed to open students' minds to creativity and curiosity. It worked for some kids, but too many others ended up merely distracted. In the '90s, school vouchers--publicly financed scholarships for low-income students to attend private schools--were praised as a way to give families choices and pressure schools to improve. Vouchers helped a fraction of families across the country but didn't instigate any real change. The 2002 No Child Left Behind requirements were supposed to guarantee that every kid learned at least the "three R" basics. English and math scores for elementary students did inch up, but the scores of average American high schoolers on international science and math tests continued to sink. The United States currently ranks 17th in science and 24th in math, near the bottom of the developed world.
Now President Obama has launched the Race to the Top campaign to improve schools by holding students to higher standards, paying bonuses to teachers whose students excel, and replacing the worst schools with supposedly nimbler and more intimate charter schools. This time will be different, he insists, because he's only going to promote strategies proven to help students, and he's going to reward the winners of his reform race with prize money from a stimulus fund of at least $4 billion, a slice of the more than $100 billion he set aside for education in the stimulus bill.
Reform-weary parents, teachers, and researchers, however, can't help wondering whether this initiative will be any more effective than its predecessors. The politics of education remain just as toxic as ever, notes
The bad economic timing "makes it more difficult, but what's the alternative?" asks Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. "Sit back for a couple of years and accept the status quo?"
" Pockets of success." There is at least some basis for hope that this turnaround effort might actually be different. Warren Simmons, executive director of the
The long view also supports some optimism. Gregg B. Jackson, an emeritus historian of education at
© U.S. News & World Report
Will Obama's School Reform Plan Work? | Kim Clark