Students Are Counting on Obama
The 2012 State of the Union address on Tuesday evening is an opportunity for President Obama to remind Congress and the country that we cannot abandon the educational needs of low-income students, students of color, and other groups of students who have been historically disadvantaged.
Our country’s demographics are shifting rapidly. For the United States to maintain its competitive edge, we must aggressively revamp our systems and commit to ensuring that all children — particularly low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities, and English-language learners — receive a first-rate education. With this in mind, here are the top three education priorities we at The Education Trust believe the president should highlight in his address:
• Recommit to educational equity. The federal government’s primary role in education is ensuring equity for children who have been historically disadvantaged. The president should recommit his administration to that role. Hard-fought progress has been made in improving the education of all children, regardless of their family income, race or ethnicity, disability, or English-language proficiency. But there is still so much work to be done we can’t afford to retreat now.
• Make going to college a real possibility for low-income students. College is becoming an unattainable dream for millions of students. For example, low-income students currently must finance an amount equivalent to 72 percent of their family’s annual income to attend a public university for just one year, even after accounting for grant aid. And last year Washington demanded an additional pound of flesh from low-income students by cutting their eligibility for Pell Grants. The president must make clear that reining in federal spending cannot simply mean taking away aid from needy students.
• Reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) the right way. The president should call on Congress to get this reauthorization right. Too much depends on it. All children in all schools should be academically prepared to enter college or a career after graduating from high school. And they should be expected to reach high levels of achievement. What’s more, all children in all schools should have access to highly effective teachers. Lowballing the standards and expectations for our nation’s schools, for the sake of political expediency, does not serve students or taxpayers.
Once a year, the president has the opportunity to focus the nation on what’s really important for our future. For children, not much tops a high quality education. Certainly, the need to reform our current system extends beyond these three modest proposals. These are simply the most important at this time. If any of them appear in the president’s address, we hope members of Congress from both sides of the aisle offer to work with him. Millions of students are depending on it.
—Lynn Jennings
