Response to President Obama’s State of the Union Address

Image by Blacksonville Community Network via Flickr

For the optimistic, there was important bipartisan consensus on education in President Obama’s State of the Union speech and the Republican response. The President and Congress must make jobs and opportunity for all Americans the central focus in 2010-and since the President acknowledges educational opportunity is the best anti-poverty measure, the President and Congress must reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 2010.
Accomplishing these goals will take more than speeches; it requires clear timelines, plans, bold leadership-and, most importantly, building public will to ensure that civil rights protections are enforced to address the racial, ethnic and gender disparities in education rampant in each of the 50 states across the country. Whether it’s the overrepresentation of Blacks in special education, underrepresentation of Latinos and native Americans in gifted and talented courses, or the national 47% graduation rate for Black males, these disparities must be addressed and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) must have the tools and positioning within the Administration and Department to do the job. OCR must be given a central role in the Administration’s discussions around reauthorizing ESEA as well as the implementation of the federal education programs and grants, including enhancing OCR’s capacity to provide technical assistance, monitoring and civil rights enforcement in education. Failure to connect the OCR lens to ESEA reauthorization could well lead to policies inconsistent with protecting all students’ opportunity to learn as a civil right.

A clear example that poses a significant threat to the opportunity to learn for children who are suffering most from the achievement gap is the President’s call to launch ” a national competition to improve our schools” as the lead policy frame for the coming year’s education reform-modeled on the Race to the Top and the Innovation Fund initiatives. If America is going to achieve a common goal, more than $5 billion of federal resources cannot be distributed in a manner where some states will be winners and some losers, meaning some children will continue to be denied the opportunity to learn based on their zip codes. We call for the President to stand by his statement that, “In this country, the success of our children cannot depend more on where they live than their potential.”

Competition might be appropriate if the playing field was level and fundamental rights were not at stake. The status quo is that far too many children attend schools that are separate, unequal and horribly inadequate. Considering there are scarce and ever diminishing state educational resources, relying on competition between states and districts to drive reform seems to tolerate the fact that many children will remain losers.

Children who reside in a state that fails to commit sufficient rigor and resources toward education do not deserve less federal support and monitoring but increased accountability and support. It is clear that, with state budget deficits, resources must be targeted on those interventions that help not just a small group of students but all students. The federal government must demand high return on investments with the billions of dollars the states will receive through Title I, while also providing the additional supports necessary to protect every child’s civil right to a fair and substantive opportunity to learn.

We believe that a more dramatic change in education reform policy is needed, one focused on addressing clear inequities in educational opportunity. Achieving this goal calls for a federal system for resource accountability. Specifically, we hope that the reauthorization of ESEA includes a set of common opportunity resource standards to track student access to core educational resources researchers agree are essential for children to have the opportunity to learn: high-quality early childhood education, prepared and effective teachers; and, a broad college-bound curriculum (including the Arts and PE) that will prepare all students to participate effectively in our democracy.

The President and Congress must ensure that access to a world-class education becomes the rule for all America’s children, not the exception or a reward received only by children living in more competitive states and districts. Only a common agenda that guarantees an opportunity to learn for all America’s children ensures that our nation’s labor force and economy will be globally competitive.