What Obama’s debate performance says about his education policy

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/10/04/what-obamas-debate-performance-says-about-his-education-policy/

In the wake of President Obama’s lackluster performance in his first debate with Mitt Romney, commentators have suggested that part of the president’s problem was that during his time in the White House, he (like other presidents before him) has rarely been challenged. People don’t interrupt him, tell him he is being obtuse and that he is dead wrong.

So what does this have to do with his education policy?

For years many people in the education world have wondered if Obama actually understands the effect that his policies have on schools, teachers, principals and students. Take his comment in the debate that the Race to the Top initiative wasn’t a “top-down” effort.

Race to the Top is the multi-billion-dollar program in which federal dollars were awarded to states and school districts that promised to make the reforms that Obama’s Education Department wanted. States, in a desperate attempt to win dollars during a time of shrinking resources, changed their laws to try to get the money, not necessarily because they thought what they were doing was the right thing. Some won the cash and some didn’t.