President Obama wants to make a bargain with the schools of America. Here’s what he said in his State of the Union Address to Congress:

Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. And in return, grant schools flexibility: to teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn. That’s a bargain worth making.

But wait … check out this conversaiton between Jon Stewart and Arne Duncan before you get too excited. If you work in a school today (as Jon Stewart’s mom does), you are likely to find this exchange interesting to say the least.

For more insight into how demands for improvement and accountability can so easily slide into teacher bashing, see Valerie Strauss’s Washington Post blog of Feb 17. She re-posts a piece by Carol Corbett Burris, principal of South Side High School in New York. Burris was named the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She’s also a co-author of the principals’ letter against evaluating teachers by student test scores, which has been signed by nearly 1,400 New York principals.

What do you think needs to change for President Obama’s “bargain” to become more than an advertising gimmick?