By Lance Izumi

In his first big education speech earlier this month, President Barack Obama tried to show that he is a reformer, and not a shell for the education special interests that dominate the Democratic Party. While he had a few worthwhile ideas, others sounded good until one turned to the details.

“What’s required is not simply new investments, but new reforms,” President Obama told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Some of his reform ideas did address important needs, such as longitudinal student performance data from “childhood through college.”  He rightly pointed out that such data can “tell us which students had which teacher so we can assess what’s working and what’s not.”

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