President Obama Reaffirms His Commitment to Education
In President Obama’s recent State of the Union address, he reaffirmed his commitment to improving education in the United States. In his speech, he outlined four main problems he sees as primary issues that need to be addressed. First, the United States needs to improve our schools, from rural areas to cities, because our young adults are not graduating high school and not able to compete with young adults in other countries for jobs in the global market, particularly in the areas of math and science. Second, there is still a pervasive inequality among different school districts – whether kids succeed is based more on where they live and go to school as opposed to their natural abilities. Third, high school diplomas are no longer enough for individuals to have economic success; the United States needs to get more young adults to graduate college. Fourth, not enough college graduates are going into public service, partly because of high student dept payments.
President Obama also took the opportunity to lay out the policy solutions to these problems. To improve schools, he proposed that policymakers pursue educational reform through the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). He also stressed the importance that these reforms would extend to all 50 states to ensure that all kids will have the chance at a good education, no matter where they live. To help increase college graduates, he urged Congress to pass a bill to revitalize struggling community colleges. This is seen not only as a vehicle to help achieve the President’s goal of once again becoming the nation with the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by 2020, but also as a way to strengthen and stabilize our economy. Further, he proposed to end taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans saving the government money. In theory, the money would go towards increasing Pell Grants and to give a $10,000 tax credit to families that pay for four years of college; this will create incentives for more people to go to and finish college. To help increase the number of college graduates going into public service, he proposed that college graduates pay only 10 percent of their income paying back student loans. This would ease the worry that public service jobs will not pay enough to cover student loans payments. Lastly, for 1 million students, student loan debt will be forgiven after 20 years and after only 10 years if they go into public service.
Education has recently proved to be one issue (perhaps the only issue) that both liberals and conservatives agree upon. Both Republicans and Democrats have lauded President Obama’s initiatives to help improve education through increasing standards and creating better incentives to help improve educational accountability. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has had discussions pertaining to the reauthorization of the ESEA speaking about what reforms should look like. One of the changes that Secretary Duncan has spoken about is the increase of incentives for schools to raise student achievement and increase accountability, rather than the old system of being punished for not raising achievement. Though there is tremendous opportunity for educational reforms in the face of the reauthorization of the ESEA, it will no doubt be a long process to gain consensus on what form the changes will take.
Photo Credit: 2010 State of the Union Address
