To rousing applause, the president gave what was perhaps his best education speech to date last night, making it clear that “government programs alone…” won’t solve our problems, instead asking this community in particular to adopt  “a new mind set”, one that doesn’t tolerate failure.

“No excuses,” the president demanded to this audience. “No excuses.”

He has our thanks and our blessing for adopting the Reform Battle Cry.

“No Excuses” he said to the organization that, despite it’s name, has in reality done little in the last 20 years to support the kinds of real reforms that can indeed create a no excuses culture for poor children, children of color, all children in need.

And so the president’s impassioned and bold speech is particularly music to the ears of reformers of all stripes.

“I hope you don’t mind. I want to go on a little detour here about education (to rousing applause). In the 21st century when so many jobs will require a bachelors degree or more… a world class education is a prerequisite for success. You know what I’m taking about. There’s a reason the story of the civil rights movement was written in our schools.

“There is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child’s God given potential.

“Yet more than half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, the dream of a world class education is still being deferred…” (i.e. Achievement gap, dropouts, corridors of shame…)

“The state of our schools… is an American problem. Because if black and brown children cannot compete, America cannot compete.

“And let me say this, if Al Sharpton, Mike Bloomberg and Newt Gingrich can agree we have to solve the education problem, then that’s something all of America can agree we can solve.

“Those guys came into my office… and I kept on doing a double take. So that’s a sign of progress and a sign of the urgency of the education problem. All of us can agree that we have to offer every child in this country – every child – the best education the world has to offer… and all of us in government have to do our part by not only offering more resources, but by demanding more reform…”

Perhaps the evening’s least applause came when the President questioned the very conventional wisdom that has guided the thinking of the NAACP and other traditional civil rights groups: “We have to get past this old fashioned paradigm that somehow it’s just money,” he said to no applause.  “We have to get past the [idea] that it’s just reform, but no money,” he said as the applause picked up.

And President Obama acknowledged the flaws in some other conventional wisdom thinking, like, for example, not all early education programs are great and that parents should hold their children accountable for the highest of expectations, not just expect the schools and the government to do their jobs. “You can’t just contract out parenting…”

“We’ve got to say to our children, yes, if you’re African American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that someone in a wealthy suburb does not have to face. That’s not a reason to get bad grades, that’s not a reason to cut class, that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands – and don’t you forget that.

“You get that education. All those hardships will just make you stronger, better able to compete. Yes… we… can.”

A must listen. A must read. Thank you, Mr. President.

(Part II of The New No Excuses President will look at how Obama’s words fit a man who would normally endorse the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program…)

Knowledge is power, KIPP’s moniker, might need to be more aptly applied to the parent company’s involvement and understanding of local school issues. The knowledge of what was afoot in two more of their NYC schools to convince teachers there to unionize may have helped them avert the rising mediocrity that will no doubt color this otherwise No Excuses school model. One wonders what campaign was hatched to convince so many KIPPsters that a regulatory environment would be preferable to the freedom they now enjoy.

Union leaders in NYC blogging yesterday provide some clues:

In a letter delivered to co-principals Jeff Li and Melissa Perry this morning, the teachers said that they had decided to unionize in order to secure teacher voice and respect for the work of teachers in their school. We want “to ensure that the [KIPP] motto of ‘team and family’ is realized in the form of mutual respect and validation for the work that is done [by teachers] each day,” they wrote.

The letter stressed that the decision to organize was directly connected to the teachers’ commitment to their students. “[A] strong and committed staff,” the teachers wrote, “is the first step to student achievement.” Unionization, the teachers believe, will help create the conditions for recruiting and retaining such a staff.

“We organized to make sure teachers had a voice, and could speak their minds on educational matters without fearing for their job,” says KIPP AMP teacher Luisa Bonifacio.

“For us,” KIPP AMP teacher Emily Fernandez explains, “unionization is ultimately all about student achievement, and the ability of teachers to best serve students at this crucial middle school time in their education.”

Mutual respect and validation?

Unionization is all about student achievement?

This isn’t the way typical charter teachers talk. In fact, it’s the way union teachers who take jobs in charters talk to their potential prey.

The teachers who signed up in these labor intensive KIPP charters knew when they signed up that long hours were part of the prevailing KIPP philosophy.

The New York Times today quotes KIPP founder David Levin, saying “Just because the school is available to kids at all times, that doesn’t mean that each and every staff member has to be available at all times. We’ve been able to successfully work that out.”

But union organizers believe they shouldn’t be forced to work those long hours. After all, this is the same union that cries over salary differentiation and opposes any performance pay that is tied to student performance and individually awarded to teachers. The move to unionize is a trade of “No Excuses” for kids in favor of “No More Time” for teachers.

I mention in the Times this morning that as long as you have nonessential rules that have more to do with job operations than with student achievement, you are going to have a hard time accomplishing your mission.

The UFT – and its parent, the AFT – has been duplicitous in its support of charters. They often send in loyal teachers to cause dissention, as was the case across the water in New Jersey with successful charters such as the Rutgers-based LEAP more than a year ago. “Don’t you think we work too long for this money?” they ask innocently, and with a tenuous economy and fear in the hearts and minds of anyone who relies on a job for basic sustenance, drinking the union kool-aid may have been a bit easier for the NYC KIPP folks than others might have imagined.

Knowledge is power. Indeed.