Earlier, Barack Obama was talking about schools??in Dayton, Ohio. (He??did so in??Dayton because it's Fordham's hometown, no doubt.) AP and Campaign K-12 cover his speech.

Today's much ballyhooed Obama education speech (delivered near my hometown of Dayton) and accompanying "fact sheet" contained more than a few good ideas about where U.S. education should go in the years ahead. But as an exercise in specifying what would actually happen??to U.S. education under an Obama administration, and what is and isn't feasible for the federal government itself to make happen, it recalled Bill Clinton's second term, awash in little, crowd-pleasing programs and program ideas, nearly all of them on the periphery of the public-education behemoth and on the periphery of real federal education policy.

Under four crowd-pleasing headings in the Obama fact sheet??("scaling choice and innovation in the public school system", "investment in innovation and technology", "ensuring effective teachers and school leaders", and "responsibility for parents and Washington"), I counted??a dozen separate programs, commitments and initiatives. None of them addressed the really tough issues surrounding No Child Left Behind (who sets standards, what constitutes adequate progress, what exactly to do about failing schools, etc); or about the big Title I program that is its centerpiece; or about special ed, HeadStart, or anything else that comprises the semi-dysfunctional corpus of existing federal programs and policies. Rather, another whole layer of programs would apparently??be added, several of them reaching far beyond anything Uncle Sam has ever gone near before, like getting states to issue individual report cards to every parent on the educational progress and prospects of every child??in the land.

Just picture federal bureaucrats trying to manage that one!

A post from guest blogger and Fordham writer and researcher??Emmy Partin.??

This morning in Fordham's hometown of Dayton, Senator Barack Obama promoted his education plan during a speech at a local high school.?? Education is a hotter topic in the Buckeye State than most places with Governor Ted Strickland already having wrestled control of higher education and now aiming to take over the K-12 system, too.?? Obama echoed many of the sentiments expressed by Strickland, calling for more after-school programs, longer school days and years, and teaching students to be innovative and creative.?? But this wasn't your father's union-friendly, Democratic education-stump-speech, with Obama taking moderate positions on issues like teacher tenure and charter schools, in stark contrast to the governor's positions.

Obama is calling for more accountability for all charter schools and increased funding for the good ones; Strickland sought to set-back big time the state's charter sector in his inaugural budget proposal in 2007. Senator Obama wants to increase teacher accountability for student achievement, but the details for this are yet to come.?? Teachers would be paid more under Obama's agenda and struggling teachers would get help, but those who don't improve would be replaced.?? Strickland seems bent on watering down Ohio's academic accountability system so that not even schools and districts, let alone teachers, are actually responsible for their students' performance.

Senator Obama's ideas are headed in the right direction but the devil's in the details.?? And it's unclear how his federal policies would impact schools and students here in the Buckeye State.?? Ohio's charter sector certainly could be improved, but if Governor Strickland pursues the agenda of dismantling the charter program altogether, all the federal start-up funding in the world and Obama's encouragement won't help these schools of choice.?? And issues of tenure and teacher pay are decided at the state and local levels.?? Federal efforts, like the Teacher Incentive Fund, are small-scale drops in the bucket and are still beholden to the approval of local teacher unions-and Ohio's are the most militant in the nation.

Ohioans eager for real education reform will be watching Obama, but keeping one eye on Governor Strickland as well.

There's sure to be lots of buzz about this Paul Tough article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine, which, among other things, aptly describes the great schism within the Democratic Party over education, with unions on one side and reformers on the other. A Democratic-reformer-friend I saw the other day said that this fight is for real, it's getting nasty, and if Barack Obama wins in November it's still not clear which side will prevail.

But let me officially lodge a complaint with the editors of the magazine, who put this teaser on its cover:

Counterintuitive Campaign Issues: Republicans Need to Take Income Inequality Seriously, By David Frum; Democrats Need to Move School Reform Out of the Schools; By Paul Tough

I'm sorry, but since when did arguing that "schools alone" can't close the achievement gap-that we need to also invest in a stronger social safety net*-become an unusual position for Democrats? It's the Republicans who generally believe that, if we provide all kids a decent education, then society has pretty much fulfilled its responsibility to offer a "fair start" in life. Let's face it: The Times just found an excuse to plug two Democratic ideas, which, for that media outlet, is hardly counterintuitive.

* By the way, doesn't the "broader/bolder" crowd, which includes the unions and most of the education establishment, understand that, in a tight economy, arguing for investments in out-of-school interventions means arguing against investments in k-12 education? Maybe this is just a conservative plot to drive down school spending...

I failed to fulfill my promise to write a post about Michelle Rhee's appearance before our reporter roundtable on Friday, and now the Washington Post's Bill Turque has gone ahead and written a fully credentialed newspaper article about it, so the pressure is off. His piece explains Rhee's back-up plan in case her teacher pay-for-performance proposal gets voted down by the teachers union:

In recent weeks, Rhee has moved to defuse expectations surrounding the contract and novel pay package. Asked earlier this year by Fast Company magazine what happens if she fails to get the labor deal she wants, Rhee replied, "Then I'm screwed." But at Friday's roundtable, she suggested that "Plan B" could have a national impact as far-reaching as the pay plan because it would show other cities a path to reform that does not require winning over unions and spending millions more on raises.

And:

"The contract is the way that I would prefer to go," Rhee said. "But if we can't get to agreement on the contract, there's another very clear way that we can get there. . . . The bottom line is we are going to bring accountability in a very significant way to the educator force in this school district."

The way she'd get there is by making administrative changes to the District's evaluation process for teachers-changes that are in synch with reformers being pushed by DC's "state superintendent," Deborah Gist.

So read between the lines, DC teachers: Either you can go with Rhee's pay-for-performance plan and get huge bonuses plus a greater chance of getting fired if you don't get results. Or you can skip the bonuses and just face the greater chance of getting fired if you don't get results.

It's hard not to love Michelle Rhee!

Thanks for all of you who wrote in with ideas for Mike Lach about how he can reinvigorate Chicago's social sciences curriculum. Many pointed to Core Knowledge--at least for grades K-8--and others highlighted the problems with Illinois's social studies standards. But none went into as much depth as Mia Munn from Chatham County, North Carolina, who wrote:

Mike,

Why reinvent the wheel? Use what already exists:

For K-8, use the Core Knowledge curriculum. There are specific standards for each grade level for US History, World History and Geography. There is a set of textbooks available (from Pearson Learning) but the curriculum can be taught without the textbooks. There are several sets on lesson plans available from the Core Knowledge Teacher Handbooks, the Baltimore Curriculum Project),??Colorado teachers,??and from the national Core Knowledge conventions over the past decade. There is an anthology of African-American literature and culture (Grace Abounding) to be used as a supplement in grades 4-10, as well as other teacher, student, and classroom materials. I believe Core Knowledge also has standardized tests.

For high school, Illinois requires a year of US History and a year of US government. Also offer a standard World History course and the entire range of AP courses in history, government and economics. Use the best state curriculum in the nation, Indiana, for the standard courses and use the curriculum guidance provided by the College Board for the AP courses.

For US History, the Thomas Fordham Foundation ranks Indiana number one. Adopt Indiana's standard course requirements for US History.??Use the best of the US History textbooks (as recommended by A Consumer's Guide to High School History Textbooks), Joyce Appleby, Alan Brinkley, and James M. McPherson, The American Journey: Building a Nation (Glencoe, 2003), and Joyce Appleby, Alan Brinkley, Albert S. Broussard, James M. McPherson, and Donald A. Ritchie, The American Republic Since 1877 (Glencoe, 2003). (This pair of books was treated as a single entry.) or Paul Boyer, The American Nation, (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 2003).

For US Government, there hasn't been a ranking of state standards, but Indiana has good state standards overall. Adopt Indiana's standard course requirements for US History.

For World History, the Thomas Fordham Foundation ranks California and Indiana number one. Adopt Indiana's standard course requirements for World History. Use the best of the World History textbooks (as recommended by A Consumer's Guide to High School History Textbooks), Sue Miller, ed., World History: People & Nations (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 2000) or William Travis Hines III, ed., World History: Continuity and Change (Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1999).

One benefit of using the same curriculum and books in all the schools in Chicago is students who move from school to school during the school year or in subsequent years will all have been taught the same things, so they will have the same (or at least closer) background knowledge, so that it will be easier for them to learn.

I look forward to reading your suggestions on Flypaper.

Mia Munn

Great suggestions, all, Mia. You are now the proud owner of David Whitman's Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism. Congratulations!

It's "Education Week" over at National Review Online. Mike and Amber get in on the fun.

Paul Tough's New York Times article, which Mike referenced, is really something. It's fascinating to watch stale education ideas rejuvenated, and to hear their proponents tout their supposed freshness. But what's even more fascinating is to watch education reformers who are unable to build a rickshaw??try to design a??Ferrari. We have such a difficult time replicating high-quality charter schools. The answer, apparently: Replicate the Harlem Children's Zone, a 97-block neighborhood in which social and educational services are integrated and which has an annual budget of $58 million.

Nothing new to report from the RNC:

Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.

When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.

Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students. And when I'm President, they will.

Perhaps we can shed light on Rhee's obvious confusion of KIPP and American dollars with the following factoid, also revealed this morning at the Reporter Roundtable: Michelle Rhee pays her children to do their chores . It seems, then, that her insistance on paying children to do the tasks they should be doing already (making their bed, doing their homework, showing up to school) started at home. Not only does this transferance of her own parenting techniques onto the school system contradict her zealous outburst in support of parental choice (especially in regards to the choices made by the Obama or Palin families come January) but I fear that she suffers from an overactive optimism about the application of economies of scale.