Apparently, the reform we can believe in will be a wholesale reform of the truth as we know it.
Carol Ronen, the now-retired state senator who sponsored the bill, said its main intent was to make sure that teenagers got information that was "medically accurate," a requirement that wasn't then part of the school code. A secondary effect was to expand age-appropriate sex education down to lower grades, to allow things like teaching school children to avoid sex predators, Ronen said."Barack never had anything to do with it," she said. "This is a lot of hoopla."
Obama voted for the legislation in committee on a party-line vote. He was not a sponsor nor a co-sponsor, and the legislation never made it to a full Senate vote. So calling it one of his accomplishments is wrong, since it never became law and it wasn't his bill anyway.
Education Week did write that Obama "hasn't made a significant mark on education," but the phrase is plucked out of its original context. It's is from a long article written during the Democratic primary that reviewed Obama's positions on education, particularly in comparison with the other Democratic candidates.Here's the full quote:
"In his eight years in the state Senate and two years in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama hasn’t made a significant mark on education policy. In Illinois, his biggest accomplishments were in reforming state ethics rules and capital punishment. He did promote early-childhood initiatives that advocates considered 'innovative and progressive,' said Betsy D. Mitchell, a lobbyist for the Illinois Association for the Education of Young Children. "His biggest accomplishment in the field was the creation of a state board to oversee the expansion of early-childhood education in the state, Ms. Mitchell said."
So Education Week did write the words "hasn't made a significant mark on education," but it was not as disparaging a remark as the ad makes it out to be.
