What Obama’s debate performance says about his education policy

[xchrom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2012/10/04/what-obamas-debate-performance-says-about-his-education-policy/

In the wake of President Obama’s lackluster performance in his first debate with Mitt Romney, commentators have suggested that part of the president’s problem was that during his time in the White House, he (like other presidents before him) has rarely been challenged. People don’t interrupt him, tell him he is being obtuse and that he is dead wrong.

So what does this have to do with his education policy?

For years many people in the education world have wondered if Obama actually understands the effect that his policies have on schools, teachers, principals and students. Take his comment in the debate that the Race to the Top initiative wasn’t a “top-down” effort.

Race to the Top is the multi-billion-dollar program in which federal dollars were awarded to states and school districts that promised to make the reforms that Obama’s Education Department wanted. States, in a desperate attempt to win dollars during a time of shrinking resources, changed their laws to try to get the money, not necessarily because they thought what they were doing was the right thing. Some won the cash and some didn’t.

[MADem]

1. Rarely been challenged?

I think the writer blew it. Simply by asserting that Obama has never been challenged straight out of the gate, she makes me not want to hear a word she's wanting to say.

Obama has been challenged continuously since he's been in office--by the tea party nuts, the birthers, and the John "I hate Susan Rice" McCains on the Hill.

And they have not been polite about it at all.

This woman may have points to make, but starting out with that load of bullshit hyperbole ain't the way to drive 'em home.

[Igel]

4. Context.

"People don’t interrupt him, tell him he is being obtuse and that he is dead wrong."

When Boehner is speaking on the floor of the House Obama's not there to be interrupted. At press conferences few reporters tell him he's being thick. Those that shout out during speeches that he's dead wrong are considered hecklers or bores and no response--apart from witty putdowns--is needed.

A better come back would have been that he's married and has teenage daughters. In other words, he's constantly interrupted, told he's being obtuse and that he's dead wrong. At least by females.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. He's not a "public school person" being advised by *other* non-public school people.

http://riverdalepress.com/stories/Obama-never-learned,50180?page=1&content_source=

Put these people together in one room and you have a *tsunami* of cluelessness that rivals "the best and the brightest" in their certainty that they knew what to do in SE Asia during Kennedy/Johnson.

Obama should take a page from George Aiken: "declare victory and pull *out*."

Before his insulation and sense of certainty do any more damage.

[thelordofhell]

3. Didn't the 1st debate happen on the President's and the FLOTUS' anniversary??

I though that was the reason he was off.........