{"id":21286,"date":"2014-01-29T08:01:56","date_gmt":"2014-01-29T13:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=21286"},"modified":"2014-01-29T09:07:33","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T14:07:33","slug":"what-the-president-said-about-education-in-the-state-of-the-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2014\/01\/29\/what-the-president-said-about-education-in-the-state-of-the-union\/","title":{"rendered":"What The President Said About Education In The State Of The Union"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"President<\/a>

blatantworld.com \/ Flickr<\/p>

President Barack Obama delivers his 2010 State of the Union speech.<\/p><\/div>\n

President Barack Obama again asked Congress to expand access to early childhood education programs and defended a major federal grant program, but didn’t propose any new initiatives.<\/p>\n

Education Week<\/em> has the recap here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama placed education at the center of a broad strategy to bolster economic mobility and combat poverty\u2014calling on Congress in his State of the Union speech to approve previously unveiled initiatives to expand preschool to more 4-year-olds, beef up job-training programs, and make post-secondary education more effective and accessible.<\/p>\n

“Last year, I asked this Congress to help states make high-quality pre-K available to every 4-year-old,” said Obama, whose education agenda in his second term has shifted away from K-12 toward prekindergarten and college affordability. “As a parent as well as a president, I repeat that request tonight. But in the meantime, 30 states have raised pre-K funding on their own. They know we can’t wait.”<\/p>\n

Obama used his speech to mount an indirect defense of the common-core standards and a more spirited, direct defense of the program that spurred states to adopt them: Race to the Top. This, too, from an administration that has been blamed for threatening the future of the Common Core State Standards by supporting them\u2014and from a president who hasn’t talked much at all about Race to the Top in recent major speeches. He credits his Race to the Top competitive-grant program with helping raise standards\u2014and performance (which many may argue it’s too soon to tell).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Several analyses of the address pointed out that funding universal pre-k is going to be a hurdle. Claudio Sanchez of NPR<\/a> put it this way:<\/p>\n