Obama: Schools can improve with right incentives
President Barack Obama speaks to CIA employees at the CIA Headquarters, Friday, May 20, 2011 in Langley, Va. Obama congratulated the country's intelligence workers for the years of effort that led to the discovery and killing of terrorist Osama bin Laden. He also thanked them for their daily work in protecting America, saying he'd never felt prouder or more confident about them. He said they're proof that when Americans put their mind to something, "there is nothing we cannot do."
BY ERICA WERNER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- Trying to make his case for overhauling the nation's education laws, President Barack Obama is highlighting progress at a Tennessee high school as evidence that the proper incentives can help all schools succeed.
Obama focused his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday on Memphis' Booker T. Washington High School, where the president delivered the commencement address Monday.
Graduation rates at the school, which is in a poor, crime-ridden neighborhood, have risen impressively in just three years. The school won a national competition to secure him as its speaker by demonstrating how it overcame challenges through innovations such as separate freshman academies for boys and girls.
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