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As a leader of school system revamp, President Obama should call for an education high level meeting, if he wants to gain everyone’s trust. The education summit called for by him should include distinguished educational leaders and teacher organizations, to reshape his policies that will take effect shortly.

There is a general consensus among state and national policy makers that his way of thinking is at fault. In fact, leaders from contrary sides in the educational bandwagon have joined together in denouncing Obama’s education policy.

They feel that the role played by Education Secretary Arne Duncan as the educational counsellor of the President is unproductive. They say that Duncan’s way of thinking is suited to the field of sports and not for recovery of our education system. 

They argue that competition within battling schools for restricted money creates irritation and lesser productivity as opposed to sports where it is a great motivation. Assessing teacher performance is not the same as assessing player performance. Apart from a healthy competition, teachers from various schools today must necessarily hold up, share, bear and help each other.
The responsibility of taking part in the process of development must be given to both teachers and principals.

 “We must fire bad teachers” was Newsweek’s   symbolized phrase with a highlighting cover story. With confidence, we can say that educational organizations must take more responsibility for good teaching quality. The failure of the battle within teacher organizations and policy makers will affect the students on a massive scale.

An example of the failure in education policy is the latest Obama – Duncan $3 billion Race to the Top program. If only the States promise to execute changes favoured by Duncan and help the most troubled schools, they succeed in being a contender for winning the prized funds. There are a few models proposed by Obama and Duncan for revamping the education system -

•    According to the turnaround model, the principal of the schools is replaced with less than half of the existing staff members. However, if the principal is good, the valuation depends on performance of only 10% of the teachers.

•    Restart model stipulates that schools can operate on a contract basis. But this conversion is not a solution to initiate them. Good schools must be developed from the foundation with a set of core knowledge and not replacement.

•    According to the school closure model the whole school will be shut down and students will be sent to higher performing schools. Without a careful analysis of the problems, terminate a school? The problem lies with the financial and cultural background of the learners. High achieving schools usually do not give attention to low performing students.

•    The transformation model stipulates substituting the principal. Even if the principal is capable, instructions should be modified according to the practice in successful schools the students are academically programmed. Student motivation should be given importance rather than increasing their learning time.  

All these models may be effective to a certain extent but do not help with schools struggle for financial assistance which in fact is one of the main reasons for their under-performance.