Teaching Profession

Obama: Stop Bashing Teachers

By Liana Loewus — January 25, 2012 1 min read
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Both Alyson Klein and Stephen Sawchuk have great roundups of President Obama’s comments on education during his State of the Union address last night. This year’s speech didn’t offer as much air time to the topic as his speech a year ago, but it did include a key passage on teachers:

Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn. That's a bargain worth making.

So, teachers—how do you react to this? Does it bother you that in the same breath he asked people to stop “bashing” teachers he advocated replacing teachers who “aren’t helping kids learn”? Or is the call for getting rid of bad teachers—assuming it’s clear who they are—worthy of a standing ovation?

Also, this is an interesting tidbit: According to Mashable, the No. 1 hashtag on Twitter during the speech was #education, with nearly 36,000 tweets (despite Obama’s limited comments on ed.) How much do you think teachers contributed to the tweeting?

A version of this news article first appeared in the Teaching Now blog.