SIMMONS: Obama’s tailor-made school plan

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Have you ever wondered why we don’t see President Obama wearing seersucker suits and straw hats, or hoodies and doo-rags?

Think he wears Hickey Freeman?

Who cares, right?

But pay attention to when, how and where the president tailors his messages about education, since looks can be deceiving.

The Obama campaign has had nothing new to say about education reform in a long time.

In fact, even as parents, governors and other power brokers continue to push for tying education dollars to student and teacher achievement and expanding school choice, Mr. Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, continue to weave the rotting threads of the No Child Left Behind Act with the president’s own Race to the Top initiative.

Recently, especially since Rep. Paul Ryan sidled up to presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the Democrats’ shoo-in has been timing his school messaging to visits in key battleground states and special constituencies in local school districts.

On Thursday, by way of example, the Obama camp begins airing a TV ad simply called “Children,” in which a man, a woman and a voice-over artist advocate smaller class sizes and the “very best public education” system.

The ad targets Virginia, which Mr. Obama turned blue in 2008, and Ohio, which no winning Republican presidential candidate has ever lost. The ads also are running in Nevada.

The overall theme of the ad takes a seam ripper to the Romney-Ryan ticket on education spending.

Team Obama likely is using campaign funds to pay for his radio and TV ads, but his education IOUs are paid for with federal dollars tied to Part II of Race to the Top.

Where the original $4.35 billion Race to the Top program targeted the District of Columbia and the states, the current $400 million offshoot targets school districts.

“Applicant districts must agree to implement the four core components of [Race to the Top] (common standards, teacher evaluations, data systems, and the Administration’s school turnaround model), and must secure school board and teacher union buy-in for their application,” Lindsey Burke explained in a succinct Heritage Foundation blog post.

But check this out. Before school board buy-in was stipulated, the administration actually wanted school districts to evaluate the performance of their school board members.

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