President Obama told D.C. Public Schools students on Wednesday that they’re on the hook for helping America get back into intellectual shape. “With all of the challenges that our country faces today, we don’t just need you for the future — we actually need you right now,” Obama said in a “back-to-school” speech at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Columbia Heights, where he stressed the need for students to complete college degrees to compete in the global economy.
But before that, Obama urged Banneker students — and all those nationwide watching — to begin innovating while they are still in school. He talked about a 16-year-old who used light to kill cancer cells, and others who founded nonprofits and volunteer efforts in their community.
“A lot of the time, you’ve got better ideas than the rest of us, anyway,” Obama said.
The charge comes on the heels of Obama’s announcement that his administration will allow states to seek waivers from No Child Left Behind, stringent federal standards for improvement based on standardized testing.
As a district, D.C. Public Schools has never met the law’s annual benchmarks, called Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP.
Just 43 percent of secondary students in DCPS demonstrated proficiency on state reading exams, with 44 percent in math.
But Banneker, an International Baccalaureate magnet, is considered one of the system’s top high schools with 100 percent graduation and college admission rates. All students showed math proficiency on exams last spring, as did 96 percent in reading.
The application-only school is not some anomaly in the school system: 85 percent of students are black; half of students qualify for free or reduced lunch; and 19 percent are English-language learners.
Banneker students and staff fanned themselves in the packed gymnasium as they waited for Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, then greeted both men with roaring applause and screams.
Donae Owens, president of Banneker’s student government, welcomed Obama “from president to president.”
Owens said she hopes to become an architectural engineer after studying at New York University, thanking her parents and teachers for instilling self-determination.
“If it is to be, it’s up to me, because we are the controllers of our own destiny,” she said.
Obama thanked Owens — calling her “Madame President” — and urged her peers to lift the United States from its 16th-place finish in the proportion of young people with a college degree.
“I don’t like being 16th; I like being number one,” Obama said. “We need your generation to bring us back to the top of having the most college graduates relative to any country on Earth.”
