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Address: Giving Every Child, Everywhere, a Fair Shot
Palo Alto, California
February 14, 2015
Hi, everybody. In my State of the Union Address, I laid out
my ideas to help working families feel more secure and earn the skills required
to advance in a world of constant change.
And in a new economy that’s
increasingly built on knowledge and innovation, a core element of this
middle-class economics is how well we prepare our kids for the future.
For decades, we threw money at
education without making sure our schools were actually improving, or whether
we were giving teachers the tools they need, or whether our taxpayer dollars
were being used effectively. And our
kids too often paid the price.
Over the past few years, we’ve
seen signs that our elementary and secondary school students are doing
better. Last year, our younger students
earned the highest math and reading scores on record. Last week, we learned that our high school
graduation rate hit a new all-time high.
This is progress. But in a 21st century economy, our kids will
only do better than we did if we educate them better than we were educated. So we have to do more to make sure they
graduate from school fully prepared for college and a career.
This year, I want to work with
both parties in Congress to replace No Child Left Behind with a smarter law
that addresses the overuse of standardized tests, makes a real investment in
preschool, and gives every kid a fair shot in the new economy.
Now, it’s pretty commonsense that
an education bill should actually improve education. But as we speak, there’s a Republican bill in
Congress that would frankly do the opposite.
At a time when we should invest
more in our kids, their plan would lock in cuts to schools for the rest of this
decade. We’d end up actually invest less
in our kids in 2021 than we did in 2012.
At a time when we should give our
teachers all the resources they need, their plan could let states and cities
shuffle education dollars into things like sports stadiums or tax cuts for the
wealthy.
At a time when we have to give
every child, everywhere, a fair shot – this Congress would actually allow
states to make even deeper cuts into school districts that need the most
support, send even more money to some of the wealthiest school districts in
America, and turn back the clock to a time when too many students were left
behind in failing schools.
Denying a quality education to
the children of working families is as wrong as denying health care or child
care to working families. We are better
than this.
I have a different vision for the
middle class.
In today’s world, we have to equip
all our kids with an education that prepares them for success, regardless of
what they look like, or how much their parents make, or the zip code they live
in.
And that means trying new things,
investing in what’s working, and fixing what’s not.
That means cutting testing down
to the bare minimum required to make sure parents and teachers know how our
kids and schools are doing from year to year, and relative to schools
statewide.
That means giving the teachers
and principals who do the hard work every day the resources they need to spend
less time teaching to a test, and more time teaching our kids the skills they
need.
Some of these changes are
hard. They’ll require all of us to
demand more of our schools and more of our kids, making sure they put down the
video games and iPhones, and pick up the books.
They’ll require us to demand that Washington treat education reform as
the dedicated progress of decades – something a town with a short attention
span doesn’t always do very well.
But I'm confident we can do
this. When it comes to education, we are
not a collection of states competing against one another; we are a nation
competing against the world. Nothing
will determine our success as a nation in the 21st century more than how well
we educate our kids. And we shouldn’t
accept anything less than the best.
Thanks, and before I go – Happy
Valentine’s Day, Michelle. Have a great
weekend, everybody. |
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