Prepared text of Obama's speech to school students

"Hello, everyone — how's everybody doing today? I'm here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we've got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through 12th grade. I'm glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it's your first day in a new school, so it's understandable if you're a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you're in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could've stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday — at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn't too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I've given a lot of speeches about education. And I've talked a lot about responsibility.

I've talked about your teachers' responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don't spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren't working where students aren't getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer — maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper — but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor — maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine — but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a senator or a Supreme Court justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life — I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nationmore fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that — if you quit on school — you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.

Now I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that's like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn't fit in.

So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I'm not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our first lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn't have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren't right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of yourlife — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home — that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who's fought brain cancer since he was three. He's endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer — hundreds of extra hours — to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he's headed to college this fall.

And then there's Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she's on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren't any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. That's why today, I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education — and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures. J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can't let your failures define you — you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time you sing a song. You've got to practice. It's the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust — a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor — and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you — don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you've got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't let us down — don't let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America."

Leadership and Teaching That Learns

In his speech to a stadium full of people who waited hours in temperatures hovering around 100 degrees, Mr. Obama said that the nation needs “a fundamental change of perspective and attitude,” one that values substance over appearance, character over celebrity and wise investments over “get rich quick schemes.”

Amen, Mr. Obama. In reflecting about yesterday's post, I keep coming back to the notion that we need to learn to capture learning itself, not just the outcome of learning. By the same token, we need to model our own learning. True or not, the old paradigm in Education is Teacher as "Know-er", student as empty vessel.

Having earned a Bachelor's degree means we now have the right to seek a job, perhaps as a teacher if we also achieved teaching certification. But we're not done learning. Are we? Even after we've achieved a Master's or Advanced degree, do we know all that there is to know?
As long as we plant notions in our student's minds that there will be a point at which they will "arrive", we will fail to teach them anything valuable.

So much better are our students (and us) if we can learn with them. Or have them teach us. Doing so, however, requires a good bit of introspection to "let go and let learn". If we model his we will be fulfilling Obama's challenge: We will be modeling substance, honesty and integrity. We will have that elusive of all traits: Character.

Help Obama Make Music A Core Subject

There's a petition you can sign if you believe the following:

Be it resolved that we, the undersigned, agree that all Americans should work to enhance and support music education in our nation's schools. To that end, we call on the U.S. Department of Education and all American leaders to:

• Mandate that music and the other arts be part of every child's core curriculum;

• Ensure music and the other arts are included as a part of a balanced education addressing the whole child, to prepare them for the creative thinking necessary for success in the work force of the future;

• Ensure qualified music teachers and sequential curricula be recognized as the basis for providing all students with substantive education in music and the other arts;

• Ensure programs in music and the other arts provide rigorous instruction, monitor progress and performance through meaningful assessment, and take place within a structure of accountability to school officials, parents, and the community.

Be it therefore resolved that the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as No Child Left Behind, not only identify music as a core subject, but also recognize music education as a mandatory component of every public education curriculum in the United States of America.

So, why are music programs being cut and staying cut??

Sign the petition here:

http://snipurl.com/hi6a2

Transforming Education Now Using Technology

The following is a re-print from e-school news

Tech giants vow to change global assessments

Tue, Jan 20, 2009

Tech giants vow to change global assessments
Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco say global, 21st-century assessments are key to student success and economic prosperity.

By Meris Stansbury, Associate Editor

Primary Topic Channel: Assessment & Evaluation

Companies say they hope these assessments will spur systemic change.

Microsoft, Intel, and Cisco--three technology giants that last year vowed to increase their efforts aimed at global education reform--have banded together to develop the next generation of assessments: tests that measure 21st-century skills and provide a global framework for excellence.

At the Learning and Technology Forum in London earlier this month, the three companies unveiled plans to underwrite a multi-sector research project to develop new approaches, methods, and technologies for measuring the success of 21st-century teaching and learning efforts in classrooms around the world.

"As employers of tomorrow's talent, we have a common interest in bringing together the power and reach of our companies to improve learning outcomes so students are equipped to succeed in a dynamic, technology-rich world," said Anoop Gupta, corporate vice president of education projects and the Unlimited Potential program at Microsoft. "But more generally, as members of the global economic and social community, it is in our long-term interest to support education reform that leads to widespread economic development and a more prosperous global society."

The three companies have a long history of supporting education initiatives and have worked together successfully in the past with other organizations to support education reform. For example, the firms developed the UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers and were the founding members of the World Economic Forum's Global Education Initiative, which aims to transform education through public-private partnerships.

"We believe that collectively we can have a greater impact," said Gupta. "This collaboration is also a response to the needs of customers, particularly governments, as they seek greater efficiency, effectiveness, and--frankly--simplicity in their partner relationships."

Martina Roth, director of global education strategy for Intel's Corporate Affairs Group, agreed that the collective efforts of the three companies are stronger than any individual firm alone.

"The link between successful educational systems and strong economies is indisputable. However, there is a disconnect between what goes on in schools now and what goes on in today's workplace. By not ensuring that our children are equipped for the workplace, we are doing them a disservice and ultimately harming ourselves and our economies," Roth said.

Based on extensive research, Cisco, Microsoft, and Intel concluded that most education systems have not kept pace with the dramatic changes in the economy and the skill sets that are required for students to succeed. These skills include the ability to think critically and creatively, to work cooperatively, and to adapt to the evolving use of information and communications technology (ICT) in business and society.

Schools also need a consistent way to measure success in these areas, company officials said.

"The goal isn't to assess ICT independently," explained Gupta, "but to incorporate ICT into measuring other skills that are invaluable in the 21st-century workplace. New assessments can provide information that students, teachers, parents, administrators, and policy makers need to catalyze and support systemic education reform."

The companies said there is no specific model that the project will be looking for. Rather, it will aim to inform school leaders of the characteristics of effective learning environments that can deliver 21st-century skills and assessments.

The three firms also announced the appointment of Australian academic Barry McGaw, director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, as executive director of the project.

McGaw was previously the education director of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), where he was a key figure in the development of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures the reading, mathematics, and scientific skills of 250,000 students from 32 countries.

"Part of the challenge in creating an assessment of 21st-century skills is that there is no universally accepted definition of what is meant when we talk about 21st-century skills," Gupta said.

One of the working groups that McGaw will direct is tasked with making a recommendation on a standardized set of 21st-century skills and their measurement, "taking advantage of work that already exists in this area," said Gupta. Senta Raizen, director of the National Center for Improving Science Education at WestEd, will be in charge of that group.

McGaw and his team of researchers, especially John Bransford and his working group on learning environments, also will look into innovative classroom practices globally and identify those practices that support 21st-century skills.

"The reason why students in innovative classrooms haven't scored better than those in traditional classrooms is because the assessments were measuring the wrong skills," said Roth. "Therefore, the focus is [on changing assessments] to appropriately measure 21st-century skills, thus influencing teaching and learning, as well as curricula changes."

McGaw will oversee an executive committee, a project lead team, and up to 50 leading experts and innovators in academia and government.

"Reforming assessment is essential to enabling any systemic changes in education," said McGaw. "In PISA 2003, we took a step by adding an assessment of problem solving, but one limited to analogical reasoning. We hoped to add ICT competence in PISA 2006 but did not succeed. We all need to work together to advance assessment practice."

The initiative also is supported by the International Association of the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and its Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).

To accelerate the project in time to influence the next versions of PISA (2012) and TIMSS (2011), the project will review successful classroom practices for the teaching and testing of 21st-century skills and draw implications for large-scale assessments.

"Cisco, Microsoft, and Intel understand that technology in and of itself will not ... achieve the kind of global transformation necessary to bring education into the 21st century," said Cisco in a statement. "We believe technology has a key role to play in realizing the vision of a high-quality education for all, and we want to provide the resources to help make that vision a reality. The alliance is working with academic experts and the education community to provide the resources they require to make rapid progress on this issue. We encourage everyone from private companies to public organizations to parents and teachers to join together in this important effort."

The companies are actively encouraging other partners from schools, government ministries, assessment organizations, universities and education research institutions, foundations, and businesses to join in the effort.

"In many classrooms, the teachers teach what is measured," said Gupta. "By influencing international assessments, and working with countries to influence their policy and approaches to national assessment, we believe this project will have a direct and large-scale impact on what is taught and how it is taught in schools across the [world]. In this way, it is our hope that this project will help schools move to the style of learning environment that engages the current and future generation of students and delivers to students the skills and competencies they need for successful and prosperous lives in the 21st century."

Links:

Assessment Call to Action white paper

Learning and Technology World Forum

Microsoft

Intel

Cisco

Obama= A New Day For Education in America

Now that Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States, it's time to do our homework on his education plan. Early indications look positive.

Where he stands on issues and some voting records can be found here.