Hey Obama, what’s your hand doing in my classroom?

A March 13 article in The New York Times explains Barack Obama’s plan to “overhaul” the public education system. The cornerstone of this program involves reshaping George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act by making huge changes to it.

This new system will maintain yearly reading and math proficiency exams set forth by No Child Left Behind, but delve deeper into the root causes of our problems in education. Some mechanisms to be employed include analyzing grade improvement, eliminating the “pass/fail” standard schools have been held to, monitoring attendance and graduation rate and ensuring that the overall learning environment at each school is up to par. The ultimate goal of these changes is that all high school graduates will be fully prepared to either attend college or pursue a career.

But is there too much governmental overreaching inherent in this new plan?

Republicans will argue that the federal government is encroaching on the rights of the state and municipal governments. They’ll say that the local boards of education should be allowed to decide how to best prepare and meet the needs of their children. But local boards are failing — or we wouldn’t be at the point we are now. Students would already be prepared and excelling, which is not the case.

The elimination of pass/fail standards in determining academic success will close a gaping loophole as well. Schools have been using pass/fail to receive unwarranted incentives promised by No Child Left Behind. The reforms will also allow more accurate measures of how much change is happening and how successful new scholastic programs are. This is one of the most crucial elements of Obama’s policy.

In high school, attendance didn’t seem to matter much. It’s true that missing a day here or there probably wouldn’t set you back too far. However, there are some students who will miss weeks at a time, and their education obviously suffers because of it. By paying closer attention to who actually shows up in the morning and who doesn’t, which is another key aspect of the plan, schools will be able to target another important aspect of the education crisis.

Perhaps one of the most obvious parts of this new education strategy is looking at the graduation rate of schools. If students aren’t graduating, they’re obviously not passing their classes, let alone preparing for college or a career. It’s almost embarrassing how this has to be pointed out in this new plan, because it has been overlooked by the previous administration.

A friendly learning environment should be provided to all students so they feel welcome in the classroom. However true this is, it seems impractical to send people around to each of the many schools in the nation to observe the atmosphere. It simply would cost too much and take too long.

The more practical solution is addressed by Obama’s plan. Instead of simply making sure all educators are credentialed, as previously required, states will have to evaluate the teachers to distinguish those who are effective and those who are not. This will allow great feedback, thus those who aren’t efficient can change their methods to achieve greater student success.

Does this plan require the government to get involved in the classroom? Yes. Is this a bad thing? Probably not. It’s about time our elected officials roll up their sleeves and actually do what they promised during their campaigns. Previous methods weren’t directly engaged with the classrooms. They also weren’t successful. Is this correlated? Only time will tell.