Other than the fact that my mother attends church with Senator Obama, I didn't know much about him until his candidacy for the US Senate seat in Illinois a few years back. He certainly is Kennedy-esque in coming out of nowhere to upset the apple cart of the status quo.
While attending an educator's of color conference in Independent Schools in Boston at the tail end of November 2007, we (mostly African American) educators debated Barack's chances for getting the Democratic Party's nomination and later winning the election. Out of the seven or eight of us who debated his chances, I was the lone voice who said that Obama had a chance of getting the Party's nod to head the ticket. Not that I was or am endorsing Obama at this point, but I did see that Obama's luck and skill as a candidate is more savvy than we have seen in many generations--perhaps not since the initial candidacies of Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, John Kennedy, or Franklin Roosevelt.
At the moment, Barack's populist candidacy is in the Carter mode, which doesn't portend a great presidency. Yet, I'll argue now what I argued in Boston: Barack creates his own luck and inspires people's imagination in a way that is rare in US politics. Whether it's education or foreign policy, the American people would like to see some forward progress in most areas in the overall effectiveness of the next presidency.
According to USA Today, Obama's views on education policy is as follows...
Barack Obama on education
On No Child Left Behind law
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was not in office when Congress passed an education bill in 2001 that requires states to annually test students, known as the No Child Left Behind law. He has said it is a well-intentioned attempt to erase long-standing achievement gaps between white and minority students, but he believes the Bush administration ruined it through inflexible application. Obama wants more money for schools and to move away from traditional testing to judge schools.
On making college affordable
Obama has been pushing for an increase in the federal Pell grant awards that students can get to pay for college. That increase was part of a wide-ranging college funding bill that the Senate passed in September 2007. Obama was a co-sponsor of legislation that President Bush signed in September 2007 lowering fees and cutting interest rates for student loans by half, to 3.4%, and increasing Pell grant awards from $4,310 in 2007 to $5,400 by 2012. But Obama missed the vote on final passage.
Other education priorities
Obama says he wants to improve teacher quality and increase pay, especially for those teachers who also mentor students or boost achievement. Obama has said, however, that improvements in achievement shouldn’t be based “on some arbitrary test score.”
