Q President Obama, I'm Joe. I’m an 11th-grader at Ottumwa High School. I don’t know if you know this or not, but Ottumwa High School has the highest dropout rate in the state of Iowa.
Q I’m Bobby. We had this planned out -- a two-part question.
THE PRESIDENT: Cool. (Laughter.)
Q My mom is a teacher at the high school, too -- just thought I’d bring that up. She’s -- well, we were just wondering, you talk a lot in the Recovery Act about how you will get -- you will have student loans for kids that graduate high school to go to college, but what about the kids that do not graduate high school? (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: That’s a great question. First of all, thank your mom for teaching, because -- where is she? Is she here? Oh, I’m sorry.
Q Actually, she’s in the OEA and she won one ticket and she’s like, well, I saw you when you were here last, so she gave her ticket.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, that’s so nice. Look at mom. (Applause.)
Q And when you were here last time, she helped interview you for the Courier -- Mary Orman. I doubt you remember her but --
THE PRESIDENT: I do.
Q Okay.
THE PRESIDENT: Tell Mary I said hello.
Q All right.
THE PRESIDENT: All right. (Laughter.)
Q Oh, and then, President Obama, she’s wondering if I get the chance, could we -- me and Joe get a picture with you, too? (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: I don't know about that.
Q Awww.
THE PRESIDENT: But I’ll answer your question. You’re absolutely right that we can do a great job financing community colleges and student loans and college educations, but if we haven’t dealt with K through 12 we’re going to have problems. And the truth is we’re slipping behind. We used to have by far the best education system in the world, by a huge margin. And we don’t now. I mean, we’ve got some of -- we still have the best universities in the world, the best college system in the world, and we have some of the best schools in the world. But our overall education system is kind of in the middle of the pack, in terms of advanced countries, especially in science and math, which is a huge problem because science and math is the future. That's what’s going to allow you to innovate.
So I’ve got this terrific Secretary of Education named Arne Duncan, and one of the things that Arne and I have been trying to do is to figure out how do we jumpstart more educational excellence.
A couple of ways we’ve done it. First of all, the Recovery Act was also the largest investment in education by the federal government in history, above and beyond whatever annual funding folks get. And it helped to pay for new classrooms and new laboratories and teacher training programs and a whole host of things.
But what we had to do, moving forward, is, number one, really emphasize teaching. We’ve got to treat our teachers better. We’ve got to give more professional development. We’ve got to pay them higher salaries. (Applause.) We’ve got to attract more young people to go into teaching. We’ve got to put a bigger emphasis on math and science teaching. So we’ve just got to give teachers a lot more support than they’re getting right now.
Now, in exchange, teachers do have to be accountable. I don't want teachers to be judged just by how their kids do on a standardized test because -- (applause) -- because if teachers get kids who come from poor backgrounds, they may do worse on the test; it doesn’t mean that's a bad teacher. But there have to be measures of how kids do, year to year, even if it’s not just testing, but other measures that make sure that we’re seeing improvement in student performance over time.
So that's the bargain that we’re trying to strike with teachers: more support for teachers, more professional development, better pay, better incentives, but also we want to make sure that teachers help to shape an accountability system so our kids we know are doing well. That's going to be the single most important thing we can do. (Applause.)
And we are going to -- and we set up something called Race To The Top, which is a competitive fund where we say to local school districts and states, you know what, if you can come up with great ways to train teachers, great ways to hold the school system accountable, you’re focusing on not just the best students but also the low-performing students -- if you do these things that we know work in terms of reform, then we’re going to give you a little bit of extra money, a little bit of incentive. We’re going to allow you to compete for excellence, not compete for mediocrity.
And so far we’ve seen a couple of states win these Race To The Top awards, and it would be great if Ottumwa decided to apply. So you might want to talk to your governor, Chet Culver, and see if we can get some extra money in the Ottumwa school district. (Applause.)
The last thing I’m going to say -- and this is actually important not only about education but about how we’re going to succeed as a nation in this new century. We can have the best teachers in the world, we can fund the best programs in the world, we can give all the scholarships in the world, but if parents aren’t parenting their kids and emphasizing the importance of learning and education, then it’s not going to make any difference. That’s the key. (Applause.)
So I want everybody here as parents, as community members, as church members, to know that if we’re supporting our kids -- if we’re supporting our kids and we are instilling the values of responsibility, and hard work, and excellence, and second place isn’t good enough -- that’s how America got built. That’s how we’re going to build up our education system. That’s how we’re going to improve our economy. Government can only do so much. We’re going to be there to partner with you, but you’re going to have to make it happen.
Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)