Thanks for the thoughtful response. I’m not particularly interested in launching into a defense of Obama’s education policies but if you look into the Race to the Top program, it forces states to adopt new laws and policies that ease the way for charter schools and allow for test scores to play a role in teacher evaluation in order to qualify to compete for funds. He also supported the district in Rhode Island that fired the entire teacher staff when they wouldn’t agree to spend a little extra time improving education. Yes the NEA and the teacher’s unions hate all of this, but they are somewhat muted because they know a Republican President would be even worse for them.
He hasn’t supported vouchers, and I’m sure that there’s plenty that’s he’s done going the other direction, and certainly it’s still within the general framework of an active role for the federal government in education, which a lot of us would like to end. And a lot of it might just be seeing the “writing on the wall” and trying to head off/somewhat co-opt the general movement towards school choice, but his policy is definitely not what the teacher’s unions would most like to see, that much I do know.
“As I’ve studied world history and geopolitics, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is not a conflict between the West and Islam as some have claimed;”
Really?