The president will discuss how his signature Race to the Top program and other initiatives are driving education reform across the country and focusing the nation on the goal of preparing students for college and careers, a statement from White House said.
Obama wants more accountability for teachers. The teachers unions contend that there is no universal metric that can reliably assess teacher performance, particularly in poor neighborhoods where students experience intense social dislocation. Part of the problem is that nothing seems to work: not charter schools, not tying teachers to student performance, not throwing money at schools, not even curricula reform. There are blips -- a voucher program works here, a charter school works there. Nothing seems to work everywhere. Performance measured in the short term doesn't tell people much about anything, but people grab on to numbers, and the government rewards states who show progress on the numbers, so... states do everything they can to get their numbers up.
"Now, I know some argue that during a recession, we should focus solely on economic issues," Obama says in prepared remarks released by the White House ahead of the address. "But education is an economic issue -- if not the economic issue of our time."
Not all of the finalists, however, will be awarded grants from the nearly $3.4 billion remaining in program, Duncan said, adding that President Obama has requested $1.35 billion for the program in the administration's fiscal 2011 budget.
Source:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/29/education.speech/?hpt=T2#fbid=9KwlUnOYIbJ
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/07/obama-insists-on-performance-standards-for-teachers/60586/
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