Obama's War on Schools

In his article "Obama's War on Schools," Chip Somodevilla argues that as a whole "those who know schools best are frightened for the future of public education...[and] they see no one in a position of leadership who understands the damage being done to their schools by federal policies.  Somodevilla believes that those "who know schools best" feel betrayed by President Obama's unwillingness to separate himself from former President Bush's No Child Left Behind, a policy that Somodevilla argues is the primary reason for our present education woes.  He argues in fact that President Obama's Race to the Top education initiative is merely cosmetic in it's approach to dealing with the present education crisis in America. Furthermore, Somodevilla goes as far as stating that in all actuality, President Obama's Race to the Top education initiative has actually added to the problem by increasing the blockades created by No Child Left Behind.  These blockades, Somodevilla argues, are exactly the reason that the United States has fallen as a global leader in terms of education.

Somodevilla believes that the punitive nature of No Child Left Behind as well as its primary focus on testing as a means of measurement of teacher effectiveness is responsible for this, and that it has placed teachers in a corner, limiting their ability to be creative in the classroom.  Not only has this test based system of quantification limited the teachers ability to teach, Somodevilla also argues that the most harm is done to the students as teachers focus only on the test as opposed to working to expand students' overall understanding of the world around them.  Somodevilla believes that this approach lays the entire blame for student achievement solely on the teacher, leaving the student and the parent out of the equation.  This, Somodevilla argues, is grossly unfair and not to mention it places the teachers and the schools in a place where failure in inevitable.

I agree with Somodevilla's argument, there is more at play with what's wrong with education than simply increasing test scores, or at least attempting to do so.  Using test scores alone to determine the effectiveness of a teacher or school seems to be narrow sighted at best.  The dynamics at play in the life of the student are at the very least as important when deciding who passes and who fails in the world of public education.