SOTU and Education

On the education front, President Obama's State of the Union address was notable in three respects.

 

First, he adroitly tied his reforms in higher education to his larger message about holding banks accountable.  Currently, the government subsidizes banks to make low interest student loans for college.  Cutting the banks out and making loans directly will save billions of dollars that Obama directs to increasing Pell Grants and other education programs, such as better pre-K.  This change has always made sense and Obama is smart to link this reform to public anger over the role of banks in the financial crisis.

Second, in the K-12 arena, the speech was notable for what it did not say.  Obama has long pushed centrist reforms like charter schools and merit pay for teachers which tend to alienate many liberal supporters of education reform.  Obama didn't back away from those reforms at all in the speech, but it's interesting that he avoided raising those divisive proposals in his address.

 

Third, Obama delivered a line that gets at the heart of educational inequality in the United States.  "In this country," he declared, "the success of our children cannot depend more on where they live than on their potential."  Today, because our schools are economically segregated, low income students are condemned to high poverty schools that severely undermine students' ability to be all that they can be.  Now, the president needs to take the next step and find ways to create incentives for states to reduce economic segregation through public school choice.  Only then will we break the link between where a student lives and the quality of her education.