Education: Obama administration

US public schools are going broke, yet some spend like a kid in a candy store
The $578 million price tag for the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex in Los Angeles is hard to justify at a time when many schools are turning to desperate measures to save teachers’ jobs. Voters must respond by pushing profligate public schools to be as frugal as charter schools.
(CSM) … according to a 50-state survey conducted by the National Conference of State Legislatures and reported in The New York Times, 20 states said they intended from the very outset to spend all of their stabilization funds in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years. On average, all 50 states spent 86 percent of the federal stimulus money in the past two years, leaving just 14 percent for this year. Such short-sighted budgeting in the midst of the Great Recession is hard to defend.
13 December
College, Jobs and Inequality
Searching for solace in bleak unemployment numbers, policy makers and commentators often cite the relatively low joblessness among college graduates, which is currently 5.1 percent compared with 10 percent for high school graduates and an overall jobless rate of 9.8 percent. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, cited the data recently on “60 Minutes” to make the point that “educational differences” are a root cause of income inequality. … But as a cure for unemployment or as a way to narrow the chasm between the rich and everyone else, “more college” is a too-easy answer. Over the past year, for example, the unemployment rate for college grads under age 25 has averaged 9.2 percent, up from 8.8 percent a year earlier and 5.8 percent in the first year of the recession
7 December
Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators
(NYT) With China’s debut in international standardized testing, students in Shanghai have surprised experts by outscoring their counterparts in dozens of other countries, in reading as well as in math and science, according to the results of a respected exam. The test, the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, was given to 15-year-old students by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that includes the world’s major industrial powers. (PBS Newshour) Secretary Duncan: Schools Must Become Centers of Communities The results from a new global survey show U.S. students are falling behind much of the world in reading, math and science. Gwen Ifill speaks with Education Secretary Arne Duncan about the results and the the state of American schools.
2 September
A Celebratory Road Trip for Education Secretary
Mr. Duncan’s tour, coinciding with back-to-school season, was billed as a way to honor teachers. But the road trip also felt like a victory lap after last week’s announcement that nine states and the District of Columbia had won the Race to the Top, the Obama administration’s most prized education initiative.
The competition was the rarest of rarities: a government grant program that became a household phrase, and brought arcane education policy onto morning television shows.
By the Education Department’s count, the competition for $4.3 billion in federal funds at a time of state budget crises prodded 34 states to change laws or policies to align themselves with the administration’s goals for change.
9 August
Obama: Education is economic issue
(Politico) President Barack Obama added a college-educated workforce to his list of things he wants to be made in America.
In a speech Monday at the University of Texas in Austin, Obama cast reforming higher education as integral to helping the economy recover from “a body blow” and grow stronger in the future. Though critics say he should be focusing on jobs, Obama declared, “Education is an economic issue.”
1 August
Picking the Wrong Education Fight
(Truthdig) Obama comes to the education debate from the perspective of a community organizer who saw, firsthand, children who were not learning in schools that were failing them. His mission, as president, to change this situation is one that civil rights groups should be cheering, not picking apart.
There is, it turns out, something more galling than teachers unions fighting against proposals that would improve education for students in the worst-performing schools. At least the teachers unions are, presumably, acting in the economic self-interest of their members. What’s more galling is that civil rights groups would oppose Obama administration initiatives to improve failing schools—initiatives that hold the greatest promise for the same minority students whose interests these groups purport to represent. And that the basis for their opposition is the claim that the initiatives are unfair to minority and low-income students.
29 July
Obama Insists On Performance Standards For Teachers
Obama wants more accountability for teachers. The teachers unions contend that there is no universal metric that can reliably assess teacher performance, particularly in poor neighborhoods where students experience intense social dislocation. Part of the problem is that nothing seems to work: not charter schools, not tying teachers to student performance, not throwing money at schools, not even curricula reform. There are blips — a voucher program works here, a charter school works there. Nothing seems to work everywhere. Performance measured in the short term doesn’t tell people much about anything, but people grab on to numbers, and the government rewards states who show progress on the numbers, so… states do everything they can to get their numbers up. Obama Speaks to Civil Rights Group on Education
Education is ‘economic issue’, says Obama
Barack Obama said education was “the economic issue of our time”, linking America’s declining public schools with its struggles to remain competitive
Pointing out that America has been dropping steadily down the international league tables, particularly in mathematics and the sciences, Mr Obama made a coded plea for America’s teachers’ unions to comply with the controversial “Race to the Top” reforms he is pushing.
He pointed out that America now ranks 12th in the proportion of its people who graduate from college compared to first place a generation ago. “If we want success for our country, we can’t accept failure in our schools,” Mr Obama told the National Urban League in a speech. “I know some argue that during a recession, we should focus solely on economic issues. But education is an economic issue – if not the economic issue of our time.”
27 July
David Leonhardt: The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers
… Mr. Chetty and his colleagues estimate that a standout kindergarten teacher is worth about $320,000 a year. That’s the present value of the additional money that a full class of students can expect to earn over their careers. This estimate doesn’t take into account social gains, like better health and less crime.
Obviously, great kindergarten teachers are not going to start making $320,000 anytime soon. Still, school administrators can do more than they’re doing.
4 June
David Brooks: Race to Sanity
The Obama approach to education could serve as a model for anybody who wants to build a center-out governing majority.
Over the past decades, federal education policy has veered between the incredibly intrusive to the appallingly supine. The Obama administration, however, has used federal power to incite reform, without dictating it from the top.
First, Obama and the education secretary, Arne Duncan, set up a contest. They put down $4.5 billion in Race to the Top money. They issued some general guidelines about what kind of reforms states would have to adopt to get the money. And then they fired the starting gun.
4 May
Education Chief Vies to Expand U.S. Role as Partner on Local Schools
Arne Duncan has been called the most assertive secretary of education ever. He is a highly visible proponent of increasing the federal government’s role in how the nation’s schools are run.
14 April
Charter schools: Trick or treat?
(BBC) Overstretched public finances, schools warned about underperformance, politicians promising innovation, teachers’ union protesting…
These might seem familiar stories for any urban education system.
And Boston in the US is a microcosm of the trends in looking for ways to improve school standards.
30 March
Obama Signs Bill on Student Loans and Health Care
The new law will eliminate fees paid to private banks to act as intermediaries in providing loans to college students and use much of the nearly $68 billion in savings over 11 years to expand Pell Grants and make it easier for students to repay outstanding loans after graduating. The law also invests $2 billion in community colleges over the next four years to provide education and career training programs to workers eligible for Trade Adjustment aid.
The law will increase Pell Grant grants along with inflation in the next few years, which should raise the maximum grant to $5,975 from $5,550 by 2017, according to the White House, and it will also provide 820,000 more grants by 2020. Including money from last year’s stimulus program and regular budget increases, the White House said Mr. Obama has now doubled spending on Pell Grants.
29 March
Let me go on field trip or I’ll sue, prodigy, 13, tells college
Prestigious American university fears undergraduate is too young to study in the wilds of South Africa
(The Independent) A professor organising the expedition, to study local plant ecology, apparently said he was unwilling to put the young prodigy into what may turn out to be an unsuitable environment for a small child.
Colin, who has spent his life pushing exactly these sorts of boundaries, decided that his treatment amounted to age discrimination. This being America, he promptly decided to hire a lawyer.
“I’m losing time in my four-year plan for college,” he told reporters, after filing a formal complaint. “They’re upsetting the framework of one of my majors… It’s important to have a very wide world view. Biology is fundamentally about the diversity of life, with a focus across the planet.” (We feel deeply sorry for the University of Connecticut!)
19 March
The Questions Education Reformers Aren’t Asking
(Truthdig) The structural change that leads to the small school needs to be accompanied by a robust philosophy of education, a set of beliefs about ability, learning, knowledge and the purpose of education. As well, you’ll need a decent teaching force with opportunity built in for ongoing development. And what about curriculum? Or a set of ideas on how to connect school with community? The structural move of creating the small school may be central in all this—truly important—but, at its best, it will be a necessary but not sufficient condition for educational renewal. As small-schools pioneer Deborah Meier once said, you can have crappy small schools, too.
Research on charter schools—most recently a comprehensive study from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes—demonstrates the kind of variability you would expect if you didn’t believe in miracle cures: Some charters are terrific, some are average, and some are awful. The same set of issues I raise for small schools applies here: What you do within the new school structure matters immensely.
13 March
Unions disappointed by ed. bill
(Politico) “What excited educators about President Obama’s hopes and vision for education on the campaign trail has not made its way into this blueprint,” Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association said in a statement. “We were expecting to see a much broader effort to truly transform public education for kids. Instead, the accountability system of this ‘blueprint’ still relies on standardized tests to identify winners and losers.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers said in a statement that she was “surprised and disappointed that the Obama administration proposed this as a starting point for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.”
W.H. plan to remake education law
(Politico) President Barack Obama unveiled his plan for a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s school system Saturday, proposing changes he says would shift emphasis from teaching to the test to a more nuanced assessment of judging school and student progress. Obama’s proposal would toss out the core of the Bush-era law, which calls for across-the-board proficiency from all students in reading and math by 2014, and instead emphasize revamped assessment tools that link teacher evaluations to student progress, and a goal of having students career and college ready upon graduation.
On Monday, Obama will submit his blueprint for reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind law to Congress, and he’s given lawmakers a powerful incentive to take up the bill this year—his budget proposal includes a $1 billion bonus should new legislation land on his desk this year.
23 October 2009
David Brooks: The Quiet Revolution
President Obama understood from the start that this would only work if the awards remain fiercely competitive. He has not wavered. We’re not close to reaching the educational Promised Land, but we may be at the start of what Rahm Emanuel calls The Quiet Revolution. See below for another – less optimistic – view.
21 October
(Truthdig) Blinded by Reform — The Obama administration has committed serious money to education reform, but many of the Department of Education’s big ideas are flawed. It is good news indeed that school reform has become a top national priority, that the ways schools are structured, children are taught and teachers evaluated have become issues worthy of federal attention. But for reforms to be effective and sustained, they need to be grounded on the best we know and examined carefully and from multiple perspectives.
17 September
Gail Collins: The student loan bill … seems to be moving through Congress rather nicely. … It would simplify the federally guaranteed loan system, save an estimated $87 billion over 10 years and use that money to increase aid to low-income students, improve community colleges and raise standards for early childhood education.
9 September
The advance text of the Obama Back To School Speech on Huffington Post, along with other coverage – the comments on the HuffPost page are worth a glance – from what we read, we can give thanks that not everyone in the U.S. is totally unhinged. More on NYT
Comment from our good friends, David & Terry, in Washington:
— The Education Speech. Those critical of those concerned about the president’s speech need to start with the appreciation that education in the U.S. is a very/very local matter. In contrast to countries such as France, there is no national curriculum. Americans are very touchy about this local control and have a vast array of school boards (often elected) to monitor school activity. Consequently, the “No Child Left Behind” act to upgrade student accomplishment through tests and focused instruction was and remains quite controversial. Indeed, about 10 years ago there was another massive uproar over an attempt to create national standards for instruction in history.
George Bush spoke to school children in 1991; he was roundly criticized by Democrats for doing what Republicans are criticizing Obama for doing.
Finally, the president’s speech initially included lesson plans suggesting students write letters to themselves regarding how best they could help the president to achieve his objectives. This was a significant PR error (we agree)–and the president’s spin meisters had to eliminate that element. Only the public outcry prompted the White House to issue an advance copy of the speech–which now is anodyne.
So, it isn’t mindless yahoos who are “totally unhinged” that were critical of the president’s planned speech (which incidentally is being delivered at the school from which Martha and Lisa graduated).
Timothy Egan: Lesson Plans, 2009
Lesson: maybe everyone should be required to listen to the last president — yeah that guy from Texas. Maybe he had it right — just once — when he said we got one big issue here: “Is our children learning?”
8 September
Colleges Are Failing in Graduation Rates
At its top levels, the American system of higher education may be the best in the world. Yet in terms of its core mission — turning teenagers into educated college graduates — much of the system is simply failing.
The United States does a good job enrolling teenagers in college, but only half of students who enroll end up with a bachelor’s degree. That’s a big reason inequality has soared, and productivity growth has slowed. Economic growth in this decade was on pace to be slower than in any decade since World War II — even before the financial crisis started.
‘Careful’ what you post on Facebook: Obama to students
(CTV.ca News) It was billed as a controversial speech by his critics, but U.S. President Barack Obama stuck to tried-and-true advice for students, along with a sprinkling of 21st-century wisdom, in his nationwide back-to-school address Tuesday. Obama stayed far away from politics and challenged students to take pride in themselves and their education, and repeatedly urged them not to drop out of school.
“Every single one of you has something that you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer,” Obama told students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., in an address that was broadcast live in schools across the country. “And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is.
“Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it,” he said. “The truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject that you study. You won’t click with every teacher that you have.”
Obama’s speech: What was all the fuss about?
Some have compared today’s presidential address to Hitler’s hope to “own the youth” — no word on how they felt about President George H.W. Bush’s 1991 speech from Alice Deal Junior High School or President Ronald Regan’s public address to students in 1988. Others, including conservative talk show personality Glenn Beck, urged parents to join the Parental Approved Skip School Day (PASS) movement and keep their children home rather than listen to the president’s speech today. (I really don’t see the logic in that one — if it’s better to miss an entire day of school than hear the president of the United States say things like “I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education and to do everything you can to meet them,” doesn’t that point to a greater problem with our country?)
Some Schools to Big Brother Barack: Stay Out! [Updated 8 September]
(TIME) Owing in large part to the Administration’s ham-handed advance work, the strident conservative anger that erupted this summer over health-care reform has shifted from town halls to school halls. On the surface, Obama’s intentions for Tuesday seem nothing more threatening than a presidential pep talk about taking education seriously. But some ill-advised prep material from the Education Department — like suggestions that teachers have students write letters on “how to help the President” and recommendations that those pupils read his books — has left the door ajar (and that’s all it seems to take these days) for Republican charges that Obama “wants to indoctrinate our kids,” as Carla Dean, GOP chairwoman of Florida’s Collier County, puts it.
5 September
Here’s what we should really be concerned about:
Surge in Homeless Pupils Strains Schools
… a national surge of homeless schoolchildren that is driven by relentless unemployment and foreclosures. The rise, to more than one million students without stable housing by last spring, has tested budget-battered school districts as they try to carry out their responsibilities — and the federal mandate — to salvage education for children whose lives are filled with insecurity and turmoil.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan: Obama’s back-to-school message is responsibility
(AP) “… here he is, the president of our country, the leader of the free world, because he received a great education and worked so hard. He’s challenging all of us, but he is absolutely going to challenge students and parents to take their education seriously, to really have personal responsibility. He really is asking students think about how critically important it is that they do well, that they take advantage of those opportunities and they apply themselves and they work hard.”
School speech backlash builds
(Politico) School districts from Maryland to Texas are fielding angry complaints from parents opposed to President Barack Obama’s back-to-school address Tuesday – forcing districts to find ways to shield students from the speech as conservative opposition to Obama spills into the nation’s classrooms. The White House says Obama’s address is a sort of pep talk for the nation’s schoolchildren. But conservative commentators have criticized Obama for trying to “indoctrinate” students to his liberal beliefs, and some parents call it an improper mix of politics and education.
“The gist is, ‘I want to see what the president has to say before you expose it to my child.’ Another said, ‘This is Marxist propaganda.’ They are very hostile,” said Patricia O’Neill, a Democrat who is vice president of the Montgomery County School Board, in a district that borders Washington, D.C. “I think it’s disturbing that people don’t want to hear the president, but we live in a diverse society.” – Obviously not diverse enough to be tolerant and respectful.
3 September
White House Withdraws Call for Students to ‘Help’ Obama
(Fox News) President Obama’s plan to speak to the nation’s schoolchildren in a video address next week erupted into controversy as critics claimed he was trying to indoctrinate America’s kids.
The Obama administration is rethinking its course recommendations for students ahead of President Obama’s address to the the nation’s schoolchildren next week, rewriting its suggestions to teachers for student assignments on how to “help the president.”
White House aides said the language was supposed to be an inspirational, pro-education message to America’s youths, but its unintended consequences were evident.
Among the activities initially suggested for pre-K to 6th grade students was to “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.” Another assignment for students after hearing the speech was to discuss what “the president wants us to do.”
The suggestion about writing letters has since been changed to: “Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.”
1 September
Indicative of the rabid reaction to President Obama’s public initiative to encourage education is this post Big Brother alert: Sorry, but Obama’s planned address to nation’s schoolchildren is creepy
7 September
What Should Colleges Teach? Part 3
I write a third column on the teaching of writing in colleges and universities because three important questions posed by a large number of posters remain unanswered: (1) Isn’t the mastery of forms something that should be taught in high school or earlier? (2) Isn’t extensive reading the key to learning how to write? (3) What would a composition course based on the method I urge look like?
Questions (1) and (2) can be answered briefly. Question (3) is, as they say, a work in progress.
31 August
What Should Colleges Teach? Part 2
The second of a two-part discussion on how writing should be taught in college, including reactions from readers of the first column. We particularly enjoyed his response to those who sid he had obviously never taught a composition course. He certainly has!
24 August
[Professor] Stanley Fish : What Should Colleges Teach?
A possibly radical notion, supported by a new report, is that writing courses should teach writing.
25 July
Obama escalates assault on public education – from the World Socialist Website – need we say more?
On Friday, President Barack Obama announced an assault on public education that would go beyond the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” program. He outlined an education “reform” that would link teacher pay to the test performance of students and force state governments to shift funding from established public schools to so-called charter schools.
Obama spoke on Friday at the Department of Education, unveiling a $4.3 billion “competition” among the states for federal grants, named “Race to the Top.” Money from the fund would be awarded to only a handful of states that best promote “innovation”— charter schools and merit-based pay among teachers. States that forbid these policies, such as California, New York, and Wisconsin—home of the nation’s highest-ranked education system—would be barred from consideration.
7 May
This is a great ‘Yes, we can!’ story.  David Brooks looks at Charter Schools: The Harlem Miracle
To my mind, the results also vindicate an emerging model for low-income students. Over the past decade, dozens of charter and independent schools, like Promise Academy, have become no excuses schools. The basic theory is that middle-class kids enter adolescence with certain working models in their heads: what I can achieve; how to control impulses; how to work hard. Many kids from poorer, disorganized homes don’t have these internalized models. The schools create a disciplined, orderly and demanding counterculture to inculcate middle-class values.
Is Barack Obama’s education secretary too good to be true?
(The Economist) Since moving to the Education Department a couple of months ago [Arne Duncan] has been a tireless preacher of the reform gospel. He supports charter schools and merit pay, accountability and transparency, but also litters his speeches with more unfamiliar ideas. He argues that one of the biggest problems in education is how to attract and use talent. All too often the education system allocates the best teachers to the cushiest schools rather than the toughest. Mr Duncan also stresses the importance of “replicating” success. His department, he says, should promote winning ideas (such as “Teach for America”, a programme that sends high-flying university graduates to teach in underserved schools) rather than merely enforcing the status quo.
29 April
This interview with David Leonhardt in the NYT Magazine of May 3 gives an excellent portrait of President Obama’s thoughts on education and his logic. See Part II Ticket to the Middle Class
22 April
Study Tallies Education Gap’s Effect on GDP
(WSJ) Closing the educational-achievement gap between the U.S. and higher-performing nations such as Finland and South Korea could boost U.S. gross domestic product by as much as $2.3 trillion, or about 16%, according to a new study by McKinsey & Co., the international consulting concern.
The report, which used a formula McKinsey helped develop to link educational achievement to economic output, also estimated closing the gap in the U.S. between white students and their black and Latino peers could increase annual GDP by as much as an additional $525 billion, or about 4%.
16 April
Nicholas Kristof: How to Raise Our I.Q.
If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much. Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held, the evidence is growing that it is, at a practical level, profoundly wrong. Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, has just demolished this view in a superb new book, “Intelligence and How to Get It,” which also offers terrific advice for addressing poverty and inequality in America.

The campaign promises
Barack Obama will reform No Child Left Behind:
Obama and Biden believe teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests and he will improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure readiness for college.
Invest in early childhood education:
The Obama-Biden comprehensive “Zero to Five” plan will provide critical support to young children and their parents. And they will help states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.
Make college affordable to all Americans:
Obama and Biden will create a new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth $4,000 in exchange for community service. It will cover two-thirds the cost of tuition at the average public college or university and make community college tuition completely free for most students.

31 March
Robert Scheer on America’s Bottomless Pit
“In for a Penny, In for $2.98 Trillion” — The good news on the government’s “No Banker Left Behind” program is that according to the special inspector general’s report on Tuesday, the total handout to date is still less than 3 trillion dollars. It’s only 2.98 trillion to be precise, an amount six times greater than will be spent by federal, state and local governments this year on educating the 50 million American children in elementary and secondary schools.  
21 March
Margaret Wente: Yes, these children can
Globe & Mail) How to change the outcomes for second-tier kids is one of the more important challenges we face. Most low-income children in average public schools wind up poorly educated. Only a handful go on to higher education. But, in the United States, a decade of educational experiments has produced some highly persuasive results. Education can make a difference – a big one. The leading example is the KIPP schools, which serve 17,000 children in 19 states. (KIPP stands for the Knowledge Is Power Program, and its slogan is “work hard, be nice.”) Nearly 80 per cent of KIPP alumni – who are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic – go to college.
16 March
Sweden’s Choice
Why the Obama administration should look to Europe for a school voucher program that works. Video
12 March
David Brooks: The Obama approach would make it more likely that young Americans grow up in relationships with teaching adults. It would expand nurse visits to disorganized homes. It would improve early education. It would extend the school year. Most important, it would increase merit pay for good teachers (the ones who develop emotional bonds with students) and dismiss bad teachers (the ones who treat students like cattle to be processed). We’ve spent years working on ways to restructure schools, but what matters most is the relationship between one student and one teacher.
11 March
John Ibbitson: Obama’s revolutionary reform of U.S. education
Barack Obama proposed revolutionary reforms in Canadian education yesterday. Actually, he laid out a plan to transform America’s beleaguered public education system. But in education, as in so much else, ideas flow south to north. Mr. Obama’s plans for his schools will come to Canada one day. If we’re lucky.
Obama Calls for Changes to the Education System
President Obama called for sweeping changes in American education on Tuesday, urging states to lift limits on charter schools and exhorting teachers, parents and students to embrace a renewed commitment to learning from grade school through adulthood
The president said it was time to erase limits on the number of charter schools, which his administration refers to as “laboratories of innovation,” while closing those that are not working. Teachers’ unions oppose the schools, saying they take away funding for public schools.
Mr. Obama’s promotion of charter schools was likely to be met with skepticism from teacher unions in some states on the grounds that they take away funding for public schools, although teacher unions in other states, including New York, operate charter schools of their own.
Also likely to encounter union opposition was his call for a system of merit pay for good teachers, which the president said would mean “treating teachers like the professionals they are, while also holding them more accountable.”
“New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones,” the president said, in his address, “A Complete and Competitive American Education”, to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here. “Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools.
9 March
White House to Focus on Education Reform as Essential to Economic Future
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that President Barack Obama, who plans to give a more detailed education speech tomorrow, views education as linked to the nation’s future prosperity.
26 February
Obama aims high for higher education
(USA Today) Here’s what’s perhaps most unusual about President Obama’s big budget proposals for higher education: That he’s thinking about higher education at all.
Delineated in a handful of brash proposals Thursday, Obama’s plan to make college more affordable and within reach of more students represents a break from the approach that President Bush took — he focused much of his energy from Day 1 on improving K-12 education, most notably with his signature No Child Left Behind law.