Education Reform

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Pressing a contrast with his rivals for the White House, President Obama expanded his critique of the Republican budget blueprint to focus on education policy, arguing Mitt Romney would reverse his administration's policies to boost education despite the consequences to the economy. For the president, who addressed about 3,300 supporters at Capital University on the eastern edge of Ohio's capital city, the policy wasn't just about politics. It was also personal. Drawing on his and his wife's struggles to pay off student debts, Obama said at the outdoor rally that the concept of affordability was not unfamiliar.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has approved seven more requests for waivers from the No Child Left Behind law, recognizing the continued inability of states to live up to lofty standards that have caused thousands of schools to be marked as failing. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that Arizona, Oregon, South Carolina, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi and the District of Columbia would join 26 states already exempt from key provisions in the strict law. No Child Left Behind was supposed to force schools to be accountable by raising education expectations and setting a goal for all students to be proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014.

Gloria Romero is a Democrat. She was elected to the California Assembly as a Democrat and later to the state Senate. She served as Democratic leader of the Senate, the first woman to do so. Ben Austin is a Democrat too. He worked in the White House under President Clinton and was an ardent supporter of Barack Obama. Both Austin and Romero support reform of the nation's education system, and when Romero helped found an organization to push that effort, she and her co-founders (fellow Democrats)

Los Angeles should be treated more like a state when it comes to education, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Friday in an attempt to persuade the U.S. Department of Education to give the city some special treatment. The mayor wants the city to receive federal money directly through Race to the Top, a competitive grant program, and get a waiver from No Child Left Behind, the President George W. Bush-era standardized-testing policy. Both options have been available only to states. Villaraigosa floated the plan at a panel discussion with New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Education Secretary Arne Duncan at American University.

The first "parent trigger" petition in California, which sought to allow a charter organization to take over a Compton elementary school, ultimately failed amid bitter charges on both sides that parents had been harassed and lied to. The state Board of Education had a chance to make the process less chaotic by requiring open meetings at which both reformers and opponents would lay out their arguments, enabling parents to make an informed decision....

Rick Santorum, asked by an audience member about No Child Left Behind, said he supported President George W. Bush 's signature education reform law that is now reviled by conservative voters out of loyalty to his party. “It was against the principles I believe, but when you're part of the team, sometimes you take one from the team for the leader, and I made a mistake,” he said, and some in the audience booed. Santorum reiterated that he would like to see federal and state power over education returned to the local level, and added that his personal life showed his commitment.

Deviating sharply from education reform policies championed by President Obama, California Gov. Jerry Brown is calling for limits on standardized testing and reduced roles for federal and state government in local schools. Brown's positions, outlined in Wednesday's State of the State address, align closely with the state's two major teachers unions, but also embody Brown's independent streak. The governor's call for a reduction in standardized testing comes at a time when such tests are gaining influence across the nation, due in part to heavy federal support.

The price of war Re "Remembering California's war dead," Nov. 6 You cite figures indicating that there have been 6,204 U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a veteran of World War II, I can still remember the wounds and suffering of that long-ago time. Veterans Day will soon be upon us, and it should bring home the fact that every war really represents a failure of humans to conduct their affairs in a sensible and civilized way. Dead soldiers are victims even more than they are heroes.

The Obama administration is poised to spare school districts from potentially harsh penalties for low-performing campuses if states agree to broad reforms favored by the federal government, including the linking of teacher evaluations to student test scores. The plan, outlined by senior administration officials Thursday, would relieve school districts from the requirements of the decade-old No Child Left Behind Act, which requires nearly all students to be academically "proficient" by 2014.

On several occasions over the last few years, A.J. Duffy sat in a conference room with the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times and expounded on the evils of charter schools, the value of teachers union contracts that included pages and pages of extensive work rules, the importance of the teacher seniority system and the nefarious intentions of those who sought to streamline the firing of bad teachers. So it came as a bit of a surprise when Duffy, who recently was termed out as president of United Teachers Los Angeles, announced that he wants to open charter schools that will make it harder for teachers to receive tenure, easier for them to lose it and allow schools to move much faster to fire ineffective instructors.