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"Maybe we should go back to teaching," a friend and fellow former D.C. public school teacher quipped, passing along a link to the transcript of President Obama's address yesterday to the Hispanic Chamber of Congress, his first major speech on education since taking office. I don't think my friend was serious. But reading the remarks, it was hard not to be moved by Obama's sweeping vision for public education in the U.S. He gave shout-outs to all of the right reforms--merit pay, charter schools, national standards--tied knowledge to the economy, and criticized American public schools and politicians without apology:

... despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we've let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us... It's time to expect more from our students. It's time to start rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones. It's time to demand results from government at every level. It's time to prepare every child, everywhere in America, to out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world.

However, reading through Obama's address, I wondered how the proposals he makes and the initiatives he promises sound to educators who remain in the exhausting, unglamorous trenches of our public schools. And I realized that if I had read this while still teaching, I might have been pleased that someone was paying attention, but not about to hold my breath. It's not as though we haven't heard all of this before.

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