Sen. Barack Obama didn’t add much new to his plans for NCLB in his education speech near Denver yesterday.
He says he’d improve the quality of testing, give schools the money they’d need to achieve the law’s goals, and create incentives for teachers to work where they are most needed. In one interesting aside, he said standardized tests should still be given in the school. Otherwise, his comments repeated what he has said before in various campaign events. (See entries from earlier this month, March, and February.)
What struck me about the speech is that Obama promised to end the “tired thinking” in K-12 policy, and said he would be innovative. If you want one word that defines how Obama would approach federal education policy, the word is “innovation.” (For Sen. John McCain, the word is “competition.”)
Alexander Russo didn’t like the speech. Bigswifty likes did, but wants more specifics. But if perpetual blogger Mike Petrilli is correct, McCain has set up the education debate so that Obama won’t need to be any more specific than he has been.
Read a transcript of the speech, which doesn’t include all of Obama’s extemporaneous asides, or watch speech below.
P.S. I make a cameo over at Campaign K-12, describing how the McCain campaign is being selective when citing my campaign reporting. And Petrilli has a one-word analysis at the end of this item.
