2008 Politico pre-Potomac Primary interviews: on Education

Barack Obama: Supports charter schools; it’s important to experiment

A: We had a roundtable about what we need to do with the schools. I’ve consistently said, we need to support charter schools. I think it is important to experiment, by looking at how we can reward excellence in the classroom.

Q: Have teacher’s unions been an impediment to that kind of reform?

A: They haven’t been thrilled with me talking about these kinds of issues. And my sister is a teacher, so I am a strong support of teachers, but I’m not going to be bound by just a certain way of talking about these things, in order for us to move forward on behalf of our kids. And I think a lot of teachers want to talk about how to continually improve performance. That’s not a conservative issue or liberal issue. If you’re a progressive, you’ve got to be worried about how the federal government is spending its revenue, because we don’t have enough money to spend on things like early childhood education that are so important.