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Obama Backs Teacher Merit Pay

School Choice and Hispanic Dropouts

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Obama Backs Teacher Merit Pay

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama called for tying teachers’ pay to students’ performance and expanding innovative charter schools Tuesday, embracing ideas that have provoked hostility from members of teachers unions.

In his first big speech on education, Obama said the United States must drastically improve student achievement to regain lost international standing.

“The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens,” he said. “We have everything we need to be that nation … and yet, despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short and other nations outpace us.”

His solutions include teacher pay and charter school proposals that have met resistance among members of teachers unions, which constitute an important segment of the Democratic Party.

Obama acknowledged that conflict, saying, “Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom.”

Despite their history on the issues, union leaders publicly welcomed Obama’s words, saying it seems clear he wants to include them in his decisions in a way former President George W. Bush did not.

The president of the 3.2 million-member National Education Association, Dennis van Roekel insisted that Obama’s call for teacher performance pay does not necessarily mean raises or bonuses would be tied to student test scores. It could mean more pay for board-certified teachers or for those who work in high-poverty, hard-to-staff schools, he said.

However, administration officials said later they do mean higher pay based on student achievement, among other things.

Obama addressed the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a setting intended to underscore the need to boost academic performance, especially among Latino and black children who sometimes lag behind their white counterparts.

Broadly speaking, Obama wants changes at every level from before kindergarten through college. He is putting special focus on solving the high school dropout crisis and pushing states to adopt more rigorous academic standards.

Some of his promises already are in the works: Public schools will get an unprecedented amount of money — double the education budget under Bush — from the economic stimulus bill over the next two years. To get some of those dollars, Obama and Duncan insist states will have to prove they are making good progress in teacher quality, on data systems to track how students learn and on standards and tests.  Duncan said last Friday that states will get the first $44 billion by the end of the month.

Obama also wants kids to spend more time in school, with longer school days, school weeks and school years — a position he admitted will make him less popular with his school-age daughters.

Children in South Korea spend a month longer in school every year than do kids in the U.S.  “I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas, not with Malia and Sasha,” Obama said as the crowd laughed. “But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.”

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Author: Libby Quaid, AP Education Writer

School Choice and Hispanic Dropouts

In 2005, more than one-fifth (22.4 percent) of Hispanics 16 through 24 years of age were dropouts, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).  This means they were not enrolled in school, and had not graduated from high school or passed General Educational Development (GED) tests. These dropout numbers do not accurately measure the performance of U.S. schools in educating Hispanic students because they include immigrants educated abroad. However, even after adjusting for the portion of Hispanic dropouts who never attended U.S. schools, the dropout rate for Hispanic students is higher than for other major ethnic groups in America.

Fortunately, there is a proven way to increase the success rate for Hispanic students: school choice.

 School choice would greatly increase opportunities for Hispanics to excel by requiring public schools to compete for students. Charter schools, for example, are publicly funded schools that are free of many of the regulations imposed on traditional public schools. Charter schools characteristically serve a disproportionate number of minority students who have had limited academic success in public schools. Unlike most public schools, charter schools do not have a local residency requirement. According to the Center for Education Reform, students attending charter schools are beginning to perform better academically than their peers in the public school system:
 

• Hispanic students have a greater chance of being proficient in math and reading if they attend a charter school.
• Students’ test scores at charter schools are “rising sharply” and beginning to outperform underprivileged students in public schools.

In order to inform yourself about charter schools in your area check the following websites:

National Alliance for Charter Schools

Center for Education Reform

California Charter School Association

 

Authors:  Madison Jones and Renee Bou-Waked interns for the National Center for Policy Analysis

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