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What is Obama’s K-12 education legacy?


Thought leaders argue that the Obama administration’s K-12 legacy found its success in partly scaling back its initial metrics-heavy approach.

Common Core, Race to the Top, and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)—just a few top-down, often-controversial, metrics-heavy K-12 reform initiatives favored by the Obama Administration that seemed to have a lot more traction during the President’s first-term with Education Secretary Arne Duncan at the helm than during the second term.

“President Barack Obama will perhaps be best remembered for what many considered a top-down approach to education reform, and Arne Duncan was the architect of that strategy,” writes Tara Garcia Mathewson for EducationDIVE. From a strong support of Common Core to even the ESSA, “a strict emphasis on standards is one of the biggest marks of the administration.”

[For the higher education version of this story, click here.]

Below, the editors of eSchool News have compiled a brief outline of the Obama administration’s most notable and/or controversial K-12 education initiatives pulled from reputable sources of information; but we’d like to know: What do you believe will be Obama’s legacy for K-12? Leave your comment in the section below and/or take our poll here:

(Next page: The Obama Administration’s legacy in K-12)

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