Reform School: What’s the federal role?

Joe Williams rather lucidly challenged Jay’s notion that the Obama administration has radically upped the intervention at the local level, explaining that Race-for-the-Top, for example, simply encouraged (in exchange for funding) that teacher evaluations programs become more rigorous and that opportunities for charter schools and other reforms are promoted. Certainly, as a teacher on the ground in the classroom today, I feel no increased pressure about how or what to teach from the Obama Admin than I did in ten years prior. In fact, NCLB – which we have basically gotten used to – was far more intrusive and unsettling to prior local control than anything that was done in the past three years.