What has been missed in education

A good reflection as we end this presidential term (and as the former Secretary of Education visits town) on what's been missed:

One can argue that there are limits to what the federal government can do about states that inadequately fund education and that a Republican Congress would have blocked any attempt by the Obama administration to create more adequate and equitable education funding.
But the honest truth is Obama and his Education Secretary never made adequate and equitable funding a signature education policy imperative. It wasn’t in the incentives and punishments written into RTTT. It wasn’t in any of the demands for being granted a waiver to NCLB...
“We’ve stopped worrying about inputs,” Berliner is quoted, “yet, what’s coming out of schools is still a function of those inputs.”