3 opinions

Obama's Education Remarks Get Mixed Reviews

From this article three give their opinion:

Jonathan Schorr, partner at NewSchools Venture Fund, a San Francisco-based group that seeks to improve public education, gave Obama high marks for pledging to increase the share of college graduates. According to the Los Angeles Times, the percentage of American adults of all ages with a four-year bachelor's degree was estimated at 17.1 percent in a recent Census survey. Schorr told the Times, "Anything that moves us in the direction of more of our students attending college is welcome and recognizes the economic realities we're living in."

Mike Petrilli, vice president of education programs at the conservative Fordham Institute in Washington, blogged that he was disappointed Obama did not address the causes of failure in schools, which in his view include tenure policies that make it difficult for schools to fire bad teachers: "I'm looking for substance, not sound bites. From where I sit, it looks like the education system just walked away with $100 billion in new federal spending, and all us reformers got in return was some poll-tested language [from the president]."

Diane Ravitch, an education historian at New York University, took Obama to task for promising to expand charter schools. She told Politico's "The Arena": "Doesn't he realize that they are a deregulation strategy much beloved by Republicans? Deregulation works brilliantly for some schools as it does for some firms. But it produces many losers, too. If he thinks that deregulation is the cure for American education, I have some AIG stock I'd like to sell him."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20090227/ts_usnews/obamaseducationremarksgetmixedreviews;_ylt=AuxwH9JZbDoOG5eVL7fUVy1QXs8F