In 2008 Sec of Ed, Arne Duncan, under President Obama instated the Race to the Top for American schools. The motive here, according to Duncan, provided a sharp contrast to the George W. Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind. As Duncan states in How Schools Work, the goal with this initiative was to reward success instead of punishing failure in schools (namely teachers).
Comparing the last words of 2002′s NCLB to 2008′s RTT:
NCLB: And now it’s up to you, the local citizens of our great land, the compassionate, decent citizens of America, to stand up and demand high standards, and to demand that no child — not one single child in America — is left behind.
RTT: That is what I'm talking about. As Sam Cooke used to sing, a change is gonna come. Today that change has begun. Thank you, all of you, for your hard work on behalf of our nation's schoolchildren
reveals quite a bit about how these two men viewed the effort of educators at the time. One a call for people to care, the second acknowledging the work already being done in schools.