Barack Obama

Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. (born in Nyanza Province, Kenya) and Ann Dunham (born in Wichita, Kansas). Barack Hussein Obama (born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and a member of the Democratic Party.

Obama grew up in culturally diverse surroundings. He spent most of his childhood in the majority-minority U.S. state of Hawaii and lived for four years in Indonesia. Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention while still an Illinois state legislator. Since announcing his candidacy in February 2007, Obama has emphasized ending the Iraq War and implementing universal health care as campaign themes.

As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, Obama co-sponsored the enactment of conventional weapons control and transparency legislation, and made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Obama's parents separated when he was two years old and later divorced. His father went to Harvard University to pursue Ph.D. studies, then returned to Kenya, where he died in an auto accident when the younger Obama was twenty-one years old.

Schools Monday: The Sounds of Getting Serious About Reform

One of the great questions surrounding any effort to reform the D.C. schools is how will we know when things are getting better? What will that look like: Better test scores? Less crime? More local employers hiring products of the D.C. system? More kids going on to college? Better attendance? There are nearly as many ways to assess a school system as there are ways for a school to go wrong, and Chancellor Michelle Rhee is going to have to establish some markers by which she wants to be judged. One consistent theme in her work before coming to Washington is a healthy skepticism about the current fashionable obsessions with testing and with requiring teachers to meet strict certification standards that are more about racking up college credits than about the teaching skills, depth of knowledge and personality needed to infect children with a love of learning. Will that

washingtonpost.com Mon, 30 Jul 2007 08:11:02 EDT

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/07/30/BL2007073000424.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns
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