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Yesterday I had the extremely good fortune to be in the audience for President Obama’s remarks on education. It was my first time being so close to a President, an experience that was much more exciting than I expected it to be. Of course, it helped that this President is extremely charismatic. And when he bounded off stage to start shaking hands with the students and others in the audience, his enthusiasm was catching, regardless of whether you agreed with his policy positions or not. Though to be honest, I did agree with many of the points he made in this speech.

For example, the President pointed out (as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan did last week) that more than 80% of public schools could be labeled as failing for not meeting their goals under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) this year. But we (the broad we – the public, politicians and education community alike) know that 80% of schools aren’t failing. And when you look at which schools would be labeled as such, you find that a number of them are already making great progress.

So the President believes that there is something wrong with the way that we are measuring success and failure in our public schools. And that is a position that the Learning First Alliance and many of our member organizations have held for years. (Learn more about our thoughts for improving assessment and accountability in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as NCLB).

The President also pointed out that in a reauthorization of ESEA, we need to provide more support to schools, rather than simply label them as failing, toss up our hands and walk away. He pointed out that NCLB offered a perverse incentive (which many states took) to lower standards to make it easier for kids to pass a test. And he addressed issues of teacher quality and distribution.

One of the most encouraging things I took from this speech: Obama’s clear commitment to funding education. The President recognizes that reforming our education system will take money. (A side note: The President uses the word reform quite frequently. I’d much prefer he use the word transform, to better capture what must actually happen if we are to take a public education system designed in the agrarian and industrial ages into the information age…but that is another issue).

Obama made clear that he understands we need to make cuts in our federal budget – that we can’t keep spending more than we take in. But he emphasized that we cannot be reckless or irresponsible in making those cuts.

What does that look like, to him? “Let me make it plain: We cannot cut education.”

I think he is right. Cutting education is a short-term solution with long-term ramifications, both in terms of our economic competiveness as a nation and of the services required to sustain an uneducated populous.

Of course, I don’t agree with everything that the President said in this speech. In particular, he praised Race to the Top as the most significant education reform initiative that we’ve seen in a generation. Given the lack of evidence on which the policies promoted in that competition were based and the fact that we have seen very little from the winning states in terms of implementation, that is a pretty bold statement. Indeed, Obama called for the Race to the Top program to be expanded, opened up to districts. We at the Learning First Alliance have long expressed concerns over the administration's focus on competitive grant programs.

But in general, the speech gave hope to the education community. Also important: The President announced a timeline for the reauthoization of ESEA. He hopes to have an education bill to sign by the time the next school year starts. Of course, as Representative John Kline (R-MN, and chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee) points out, we shouldn't follow an arbitrary timeline in reauthorization - we must take the time to do it right. But hopefully, if all parties prioritize it, the bill can get done quickly – and well.