A look at the Whitehouse education web page indicates Obama plans to continue the leftist obsession with precisely equal educational outcomes, and create cradle-to-grave educational entitlements and increased pre-school conditioning.

To force another to do your bidding is enslavement, but to compel another to think as you think, feel as you feel, and bray as you bray when those are contrary to nature is an abuse so harsh the merely physical enslaver can almost be forgiven. Many have complained our system of public education has become little more than a tool of government with which to produce dumb-downed, politically-correct, uncomplainingly servile citizens. While it is a mere tool for acceptance of the status quo in the hands of Republican statists, for sixty-plus years it has been an ideal tool for capturing our children in the hands of ideologues bent on reducing all to socialism-insistent numb-bots.

There are few subjects on which conservatives and liberals agree as much as that our system of public-education is broken; except we disagree almost entirely regarding what's wrong with it. Ask a liberal or statist and he/she will tell you the problem is we don't give it enough priority, resources are stretched too thin, it is grossly underfunded, needs greater centralization, needs a more "equitable" distribution, needs "greater diversity" (ignoring that teachers-of-color are statistically "over-represented"), needs stronger teacher standards (ignores that results have steadily fallen despite frequently "improved" standards), is insufficiently inclusive or unequally distributed, the pay is unattractive, or homeschooling and charter schools have robbed it of critical resources; but provide almost no proof these much matter. 

About the only thing they won't tell you, is the changes made purportedly to guarantee "educational excellence" are the principal causes of failure.  Ask a conservative and he'll tell you it is because what is taught is mush, a mania for inclusiveness, discipline gutted to the point classrooms are lawless and nothing demanding can be taught (forcing teachers to be absurdly creative finding new ways to stimulate attention), that radicals have hijacked education the better to control what passes as socially accepted and acceptable viewpoints, and that the most talented and resourceful teachers are so fed up with this insanity they leave the profession in droves (even when they still support nonsense). Ask anyone else (usually with too little idea of the issues) and they simplistically conclude it is because it tries to satisfy so many contending (and contentious) groups, no progress can be made; oblivious of the near liberal monopoly.

Both liberals and conservatives have been arguing these points more than half a century. Meanwhile, the quality of education has steadily sunk. While the liberal view has prevailed and is given obeisance from both sides of the political aisle for many years, the conservative view and solutions have been almost completely ignored as "barbaric and outdated," made possible by a hostile-to-tradition attitude.

In "Education: Free and Compulsory", Murray N. Rothbard wrote: "Compulsory public presses would be considered an invasion of the basic freedom of the press; yet is not scholastic freedom at least as important as press freedom? . . . It is clear that the suppression of free instruction should be regarded with even greater horror than suppression of free press . . ." "At the base of totalitarianism and compulsory education is the idea that children belong to the State rather than to their parents."

Rothbard notes the idea of a "free" system of governmentally coerced education for the purpose of altering the cultural-political landscape emerged as early as the 1820s as the brainchild of utopian-socialists Robert Dale Owen and Frances Wright. Their idea was to supplant foundational ideas of individuality and exceptionalism with those of equality and conformity as prevailing values. Professor Rothbard is best known for his treatises on economics, yet his observations on the transformation of education from bulwark of an independent people to cultural regimentation are from direct experience; informed by the ideology of his own family — whose socialism he discarded as overwrought and overrated — and strongly influenced by the double exemplars of socialist calamity provided by Nazism and Communism within his lifetime.

There is probably no harsher critic of modern compulsory education than ex-public school teacher, John Taylor Gatto. Gatto is remarkable for having violated the cardinal rule of teacher-solidarity, and whose breakout book Dumbing Us Down created such a firestorm of denunciation and vilification when it appeared in 1992 he was forced to quit a successful career in public teaching. He has since written four additional books (The Underground History of American Education, Against School, Weapons of Mass Instruction, and A Different Kind of Teacher); and a recorded speech ("The Exhausted School").

Gatto says what is being taught (and how it is taught) in our public schools is "crippling our kids" and gives proof of deliberately institutionalized incompetence. He goes so far as to question the very notion of educating every single child, regardless of inaptitude.  While the original idea of a free, compulsory education has its roots in early-19^th century utopianism, it did not really reach critical mass until the early-20^th (1905-1930 period according to Gatto), at which time the main goal was already one of regimentation, though not yet mainly one of surreptitious ideological brainwashing. By that time, socialists were very influential, and the more radical among them made good use of their role as teacher to spread radical and socialist ideas on their own account.

So, how does the current administration propose we solve this continued slide into educational mediocrity? A look at the Whitehouse education web page indicates Obama plans to a) continue the obsession with precisely equal educational outcomes, b) create cradle-to-grave educational entitlements, c) increased pre-school conditioning, d) throwing out existing systems of testing and metrics in favor of "new, state of the art" systems (read: same old stuff but in a new & really confusing package), and e) increased teacher (aka, union) clout. Revealingly, the webpage is almost totally devoid of details on how he will accomplish all this. The one positive assurance he gives us is he will continue support for charter schools (probably because his principlal constituency demands them), but, as you will see, even that is less than reassuring.

Western Journalism's Steve Baldwin suspects all this is bland window dressing masking something more insidious. He reminds us of Obama's dependence on NEA support and his long association with educational activist and unrepentant radical Bill Ayers. Moreover, he depicts Obama as wastefully clueless as to what works in education and what is or isn't proper.

As head of the Annenberg Educational Challenge, Obama spent $150 million achieving exactly nothing in the way of improvement, and may actually have made things worse.  There is little doubt he can be credited with increasing the level of discord and radicalism in the Chicago schools he mismanaged. Baldwin dismisses Obama's assertion of greater school accountability by noting schools will get 90% of their stimulus money upfront, thereby sabotaging any incentive to do better. Nor will state governors be allowed any influence on how this money is spent. He also dismisses Obama's commitment to charter schools by noting he gets his educational advice from people like Linda Darling-Hammond, a strong opponent of charter schools, merit pay, and accountability. He further notes Darling-Hammond is a vocal proponent of misapplying education funding as a backdoor to racial reparation. 

The appointment of Kevin Jennings (GLSEN), plus remarks Obama made a few months ago that he'd support his daughters' abortion "choices," suggests a perfect willingness to sacrifice other people's children on the altars of gay and abortion politics. What all this adds up to is someone far less concerned with educational than societal and political outcomes.

Right now, the big focus is on healthcare, which has become something of a quagmire slowing the Obama express. However, I have little doubt education is still very much on the agenda and we can expect it to come under radical fire quite soon.  I also have no illusions Obama and those close to him intend to perfect the Left's monopoly over education. If they cannot kill private and charter education, they mean to control it and, through and beyond it, constrain opinion.

Further readings:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/ 
Obama's 9/8/09 back-to-school pep-talk (snore!  Well, of course, "snore."  A lot of upset parents unfairly forced him to take out the phony but juicy, rah-rah "worker-solidarity," "class-colonialism," and "students-for-socialism" rubbish.)

http://67.21.116.124/blog/b-h-obamas-school-data-grossly-overstated
Obama's School Data Grossly Overstated; opines Arne Duncan's failure to turn Chicago schools around. Dorn is now our Education Secretary. Obama falsely bragged he and Duncan nearly doubled Chicago ISAT scores during his election bid; when, in fact, all that really happened was a scoring format change.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11181-0.html?forumID=6&threadID=179848&start=0 
TechRepublic: The Education Scam "…lies told to us by our colleges and universities … simple minded concept that, if everyone got a college degree, there wouldn't be any poverty because everyone would have a good paying job … cannot make a good living unless you get a college education" opines you can have such a thing as too much education.

http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2008/02/does-compulsory.html
Notes the wage effect of compulsory versus voluntary education in the UK has been slight, that inflation adjusted wages have increased only 5-6% since compulsory education was enacted (1944). This much change can easily be attributed to things other than education (i.e., specialization, competition, market growth, stability, &c).  There is no argument education increases output and improves wages. The point here is it is the quality of education that does this, not compulsion or forced access by race or class.  This begs a further question: Might wages in Britain have been still higher without any compulsory education? Could the inflation-adjusted increase have been 8-12% as occurred here where the state monopoly is less complete?  For that matter, what increase in real wages might we have seen here without public schooling and other socialist innovations? Make it available and cheap, and those who can benefit from it will do so; those who can't or won't will make better use of their time and talents.

http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/article/265 
A truly contrarian view of education supporting private over public; compares the educational systems of ancient Athens and Sparta to demonstrate monopoly, regimentation, and the substitution of state for parents as caregiver/arbiter only serve to stifle educational improvement.

http://mises.org/story/2937
Llewellyn Rockwell: What if Public Schools Were Abolished? Public schools are costing us twice what private schools do per student. Therefore, Rockwell recommends we take charter schools to the next level and suggests we accomplish this through a combination of deregulation, elimination of property taxes (instituted mainly to pay for public schools), and tax credits. It has a side benefit of making housing more affordable.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3367
CATO 2002, New Education Bill Offers False Hope; blasts the Bush "No Child Left Behind" rubbish, but the points made work just as well regarding current big government meddling.

http://www.edschools.org/pdf/Education_Week_092006.pdf
Liberal (Levine) acknowledges teacher quality is poor and standards have consistently failed to produce better teaching; despite which, he concludes the solution is higher standards and greater conformity rather than greater variety, teacher autonomy and liberation from stifling political agendas has worked for us in past.  Also predictable, the education establishment attacked minor flaws in the report rather than acknowledge the failures it documents.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/20_02/edit202.shtml
Undiluted liberal view.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/23_04/bait234.shtml
Misrepresents a recent study finding charter schools do at least as well as public.  The article spins this to read: [the study] "…found no significant difference between the academic achievement of Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) students and those in the private voucher schools. In the end, the free-market rhetoric at the core of the voucher program failed education as much as it failed the economy." According to this reading, it was the public schools that were vindicated as the more worthy as measured against a charter school benchmark.  The reality is it was charter-schools measured against public, producing students at least as accomplished even though charters operate at a significantly lower cost per student, use fewer facilities and resources, a higher student to teacher ratio, and get many students public schools no longer want (handicapped, unmanageable, &c) now they have the option of foisting them off on charter schools.  This latter practice has the effect of raising public school scores while lowering those of charters, thereby skewing the results. The study only proves charter schools (despite many criticisms of laxity) do, in fact, live up to Minnesota educational standards.  It did not bother, however, to determine whether or not charter schools, in any measurable sense, exceed public school standards.  The study takes no account of significant "extras" many charter schools provide their students neglected by or discouraged in public schools (e.g., religious affinity reinforcement, focused instruction, grouping according to ability rather than societal objective, choice of setting, greater parental participation, &c). Some of these are qualitative rather than quantitative, but, assuming you can achieve the same or better metrics, at lower costs, and get better student-parent satisfaction still rates as a plus in my book. Sure there may be some tendency toward isolation and "non-diversity," but isn't that part and parcel of what it means to be free of government deciding such things for us?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_School#Critiques_of_charter_schools
Hyper-moralizing liberals worrying for-profit schools might actually "profit" from teaching as if this somehow compromises the quality of teaching. This, more than anything else, seems to incite liberals into being against vouchers.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/23_04/edit234.shtml "
Obama, Schools and the Environment."  Why does every eco-warrior seem to think his/her specialty is "the pivotal ingredient" to "solving" the non-catastrophe; and then wonder why Obama gives too little credit to their contribution?  Teachers really do think this way, by the way: that by "raising student awareness," it is they who create the thinkers and shakers who go on to "solve all our ills." This is what happens when you live vicariously through others. Fortunately for them, global-warming solves itself rather neatly, leaving only the question of who gets the bragging rights (I lay odds it won't be school teachers).