Obama Takes Aim at Inequality in Education

By HELENE COOPER

Published: April 6, 2011

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Describing education and education equality as the “civil rights issue of our time,” President Obama called Wednesday for a renewed effort to eliminate the achievement gap between African-American students and others.

“Too many of our kids are dropping out of schools,” Mr. Obama told a mostly black audience in the ballroom of the Sheraton New York Hotel in Manhattan. “That’s not a white, black or brown problem. That’s everybody’s problem.”
In a lightning-fast visit to New York before returning to Washington for more budget talks, Mr. Obama delivered a sober assessment of what he has done since taking office to help black Americans, and what more needs to be done. He praised the health care overhaul and the auto-industry bailout, and castigated critics who he said had developed “amnesia” about the shape the country was in when he took office.
Mr. Obama’s remarks, at the 20th anniversary of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s Harlem-based National Action Network, kept a promise he made when he spoke to the group as a presidential candidate in 2007. Win or lose, he pledged to return, and Wednesday night he spoke to a hugely supportive audience of 1,200 primarily black Americans, who had already heard from a daylong procession of the president’s cabinet and close advisers.
The president’s appearance at the Sharpton event came two days after he announced his intention to seek a second term. The White House is keenly aware that Mr. Obama will need to tap into his base of black support in the 2012 re-election campaign.
Mr. Obama won 95 percent of the black vote in 2008. Polls have shown his approval among blacks remains high, at 84 percent, while his national approval rating is around 50 percent.
David Axelrod, one of Mr. Obama’s closest advisers, told the group that Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign would seek to engage minority voters. Mr. Axelrod said that the dropoff in minority voting in the 2010 midterm elections was a big reason why Democrats sustained big losses.
Several members of the president’s cabinet promised more help for black Americans. More significantly, they allied the administration with Mr. Sharpton, who, while beloved in many parts of the black community, is a controversial figure nationwide.
Attorney General Eric Holder said he would work with Mr. Sharpton’s group to lessen violence among teenagers in black neighborhoods. Arne Duncan, the education secretary, said he had been traveling with Mr. Sharpton to try to reduce the high-school dropout rate. And Shaun Donovan, the Housing and Urban Development secretary, said he was working with Mr. Sharpton to help black homeowners avoid foreclosure.