EdVANTAGE Blog

President Barack Obama gave a major speech on education policy today.

The Washington Post‘s coverage begins, “President Obama today sharply criticized America’s public school system, and he outlined a strategy to reward good teachers and fire bad ones, establish uniform academic achievement standards and increase spending on the first and final stages of a person’s education.”

But Education Week‘s Politics K-12 blog titles its post, “Everyone Loves Obama Speech,” and notes, “President Barack Obama’s first major address on education is drawing praise from everyone from Capitol Hill Republicans to public charter school advocates to the National Education Association.”

The blog adds, “Not surprisingly, some of these groups came up with different interpretations of the remarks, particularly on alternative pay for teachers.”

The Washington Post‘s Jay Mathews, one of the nation’s leading education columnists, writes, “President Obama’s education speech this morning was, in my memory, the largest assemblage of smart ideas about schools ever issued by one president at one time.”

You can read the speech here.

Education Week also reports that the President today made an unscheduled appearance at a meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers, the association of state education commissioners, in his words, “hitching a ride” with his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan.