Obama Presses Congress for Overhaul of No Child Left Behind Law

President Barack Obama nudged
Congress to overhaul the No Child Left Behind law by the end of
the year and give states and local schools more flexibility in a
student’s education.
In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama used his
visit May 16 to Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis to
illustrate the impact of demanding tougher education standards
and overhauling schools. The Memphis school is located in an
area besieged by crime, poverty and indifference to education,
he said.
“And just a few years ago, only about half of the students
at the school graduated,” he said. “Just a handful went off to
college each year.”
The turnaround came when a “dynamic principal and devoted
teachers” began “special academies for ninth graders –
because they found that that’s when a lot of kids were lost,”
Obama said. The introduction of advanced placement classes and
vocational courses, along with “a culture that prizes hard work
and discipline” brought change.
The result is that four out five students now graduate, and
about 70 percent continue their education, many the first in
their families to go to college, the president said.
The Memphis school was the winner in the administration’s
Race to the Top initiative, which offers grants for states that
follow the administration’s prescriptions for raising standards
in elementary and high schools.
About $4.35 billion has been distributed to states under
the program.

Story of Improvements

“So Booker T. Washington High School is no longer a story
about what’s gone wrong in education,” Obama said. “It’s a
story about how we can set it right.”
Obama has urged Congress to revamp the 2001 No Child Left
Behind Law to eliminate what critics say are its rigid standards
of academic achievement and benchmarks, and instead permit
changes that get results “while encouraging communities to
figure out what’s best for their kids.”
“We need to reward the reforms that are driven not by
Washington, but by principals and teachers and parents,” Obama
said. “That’s how we’ll make progress in education – not from
the top down, but from the bottom up.”
In the Republican radio address, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas accused the Obama administration of blocking
increased domestic production oil and natural gas.

Sidelined Production

U.S. energy producers in the Gulf of Mexico, the most
abundant source of oil and gas outside of Alaska, were
“sidelined by a drilling moratorium” imposed after the BP Plc (BP/)
spill last year, she said. “Exploration slowed to a halt,”
costing thousands of jobs.
“Rather than work to increase domestic energy production
and help bring down gas prices, the Obama administration is
seeking to impose more regulations and taxes on oil and gas
companies,” Hutchison said. “This is placing our own valuable
resources out of reach and stifling job creation – their
proposals will actually increase pain at the pump.”
Even after the moratorium was lifted in October, Hutchison
said, only 14 permits have been approved. Before the moratorium,
the government was approving an average of eight deep water
permits a month. As a result, offshore production will decrease
by 13 percent next year because of the permitting delays, she
said.
“The federal government should be processing permits with
urgency — instead it is dragging its feet,” she said.
“We have an abundance of oil and natural gas — now we
need to access it,” Hutchison said. “A comprehensive energy
policy can’t be driven by gas prices or polling numbers.”
A Republican proposal to expand offshore drilling was
blocked in the U.S. Senate earlier this week, after Democrats
failed to advance legislation that would repeal $21 billion in
tax breaks for five multinational oil companies.
Crude oil for June delivery gained $1.05 to settle at
$99.49 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices fell
16 cents this week and have risen 46 percent in the past year.