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NBC Kicks Off Education Nation with President Obama Interview

September 27th, 2010 by

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Screen shot 2010-10-07 at 12.29.27 AMToday, NBC is kicking off Education Nation, a week-long initiative to raise national awareness on the state of education in America.  In addition to a full week of education-focused programming, a two day summit is being held in New York City with attendees that include Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg, and 300 national education leaders including Dean of the Rossier School of Education, Karen Symms Gallagher.

Matt Lauer sat down for an exclusive interview with President Obama to discuss the need for education reform in America and described this issue as “a long time coming.”  During the interview, President Obama recognized that quality teachers are critical to addressing the nation’s education progress.  He said, “We’re going to have to fill about a million teaching slots around the country and I want young people to understand that there is not a more important profession for the success of our economy over the long-term than making sure that we have got great teachers in the classroom.”

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Some alarming statistics from the interview:

  • 33% of students don’t graduate high school
  • 35% of 12th graders are proficient in reading
  • the United States ranks 21st in Science, 25th in math in terms of performance globally

President Obama acknowledged the need for greater parent involvement, measuring and increasing standards around teacher performance, and finding and rewarding quality teachers.   Although the road to reform is certainly a complicated one, the Rossier and MAT@USC community are paving the way for change inside the classroom.  In the last year alone, we’ve grown our student network to over 1,000+ current and aspiring teachers and with each new cohort, we’re proving that there are individuals who are committed to the teaching profession and bringing quality and excellence to the classroom.

As education takes center stage in the media, we encourage you to participate in the conversation.  Talk to your friends and family about why you want to become a teacher, how you feel about various issues like teacher tenure and charter schools.  You can leave your thoughts and comments here on this blog, connect on our Facebook page, follow our Twitter account, and tell others about our growing network.  Fight on!

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  • Swing2glory

    what kind of high standards of accountability? does anyone know?

  • http://www.alexascordato.com Alexa Scordato

    Measuring teacher performance is something that is still up for debate. I don't think anyone has quite figured out the best formula for determining whether a teacher is effective or not. There are so many variables that come into play, but I think at the very least, we need to look at low-performing schools and try to understand why students are dropping out and ill-prepared for college. If you see the film “Waiting for Superman”, they cite a statistic that over 2,000 high schools have a dropout rate of more than 50%!

  • http://www.estilo-tendances.com/ Mihai

    i live in Romania and in my country the statistics are much different. Here over 80% of those who finish 12 th Grade go to an University. It’s very good, until they finish these Universities with money, they pay to pass exams and so on, and at the end maybe only 10% are legitimate in working at high standards.

  • Ctrubenbach

    I think the time has come to take the educational system as a dysfunctional and ineffective institution, scape it and recreate one that will be effective rather than continuing to modify and repair the same system. It is the most archaic institution in the country. At this point in time, every classroom desk should have a computer on it. If you want to see what the priority is in this country, look at the Pentagon budget compared to the budget for education. It’s not that we don’t have the money. It’s how it’s distributed!! We put more emphasis, as a nation, into global military control, with tax payor money, than we put on education or healthcare. On a graph, the size of the Pentagon budget is the size of a redwood tree compared to a daisy (education) or blade of grass (healthcare). If we took a small amount of that penagon money and invested it into education instead of war, we would probably be number one in math and science. Compare the US to the countries that are ahead of us in math and science to see where that country is investing it’s money into. I say start over, rebuild and prioritize, investing in the people of this country instead of using our money to control the world, especially the countries that produce oil!! If you want good quality teachers, start paying good quality salaries to attract people and create a more competitve market in teaching. There are only so many times you can fix an old car. At some point you have to scape it and buy a new one or it will become cost prohibitive and keep breaking down.

  • http://www.saintsoldier.org/ Saint Soldier

    The issue isn’t filling these “millions” of teaching jobs, it’s providing the proper compensation. If the future of kids are so important to us, why are we so hesitant to increase the wages and add solid benefits?