Parsing the Madison POTUS visit

I have been scouring the news clips today looking for a headline or a mention of an important nugget that came up in President Obama’s speech at Madison’s Wright Middle School yesterday. Unfortunately, for now, I am coming up empty-handed. As expected, the President’s remarks included shades of politics, mantras and justification. But he also spoke very specifically about subgroups of kids whose future is highly dependent upon whatever direction the Administration takes in terms of education reform.

While you certainly could argue that the future of all kids is riding on a high quality education, expectations and tangible long-term outcomes, it is hard to justify that certain kids don’t have more to lose. In my mind, those kids are high-poverty students who many times don’t come to school with the same advantages and often do not go home to the same rich environments. It also includes kids who are English Language Learners and students with disabilities who require extra supports in order to succeed.

The data is precise: dropout and non-diploma rates among these high risk groups, including students with disabilities, are unacceptable. And when students drop-out or don’t graduate, the long-term outcomes and costs are not difficult to imagine. It affects us all.

However, there was a glimmer of hope in what I heard the president say very clearly yesterday - that Wright is doing Right by these kids.

In particular, when speaking about the types of education reforms he and the Department of Education will be looking for in states, he held Wright up as a model and congratulated staff for its high expectations for all students, “[A state’s reform commitment] means boosting the number -- the numbers of quality teachers who can help our special education and English language learners meet high standards -- and you've done that here at Wright, so congratulations on that. (Applause.)”


The applause was music to my ears. But what I hope others heard and saw at Wright is that the resources and supports that help these subgroups of students help ALL students. Quality best practice strategies like co-teaching, differentiated curriculum, coordinated planning time and universal design for learning boost achievement all the way around. Instead of investing more resources in bodies with specific titles, Wright’s success has been defined in strategies and commitment.

I also hope the President’s short sentence lauding high expectations for all students, including students with disabilities, is a wake-up call for the disability community. In order to play in the highly politicized game of education reform, we need to congratulate policy-makers when they get it right and be at the table in GENERAL education discussions to ensure that students with disabilities are not separate or dismissed amid dialogue on high expectations.


If I could have the President’s ear (still figuring out how to do that!), I would tell him we need to boost the amount of high quality instruction for all kids, period – it’s not about “special” this or “special” that. It’s not about more or better special education teachers; it is about equipping ALL teachers to know how to work effectively with ALL kids – despite the individual needs they bring to the classroom.

Lisa Pugh is the 2009 Kennedy Foundation Public Policy Fellow. She will work on disability public policy for the House Committee on Education and Labor during the 111th Congress and is being sponsored by The Arc Wisconsin. She will live for one year with her family in Washington and return to her home in Madison, Wisconsin to share what she’s learned in June 2010.