The Obama Education Agenda Takes Shape

Jennifer Marshall / April 16, 2010

The Obama Administration’s signature K-12 education program, Race to the Top, has gotten a lot of press in the last couple weeks with the announcement of first-round winners Tennessee and Delaware. But for all the hullabaloo and homework it’s created for states, Race to the Top represents only a small part of the overall K-12 education budget ($4.5 billion compared to $46.2 billion in 2010, not to mention $80 billion overall in K-12 funding from the 2009 stimulus bill) and functions outside the existent federal policy apparatus—essentially as the Secretary’s slush fund.

Now the Obama administration’s plans for the legislative overhaul of its predecessor’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) are emerging. The Department of Education recently released “A Blueprint for Reform.” As with Race to the Top, the blueprint has been couched in reform-minded terms–flexibility rather than compliance, turning around failing schools. But just as Race to the Top seems to let unions set the high-water mark for state reforms, the blueprint’s familiar liberal refrains raise questions about how far the Obama administration’s ideas will actually depart from the status quo. (more…)