Obama Presses Education Overhaul .

I am thankful that the President has not forgotten his pledge on education. There are some schools that are doing some exceptional work with our kids. I long for the day when once we realize something is working in one area, we do all we can to make it work in other areas. I hope the disparity in state, county, city education funding is addressed on some level as we look to 'overhaul' education.

President Barack Obama is highlighting progress at a Tennessee high school as evidence that proper incentives can help all schools succeed as he makes his case for overhauling U.S. education laws,

Mr. Obama focused his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday on Memphis' Booker T. Washington High School, where the president delivered the commencement address last 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.

"Booker T. Washington High School is no longer a story about what's gone wrong in education," the president said. "It's a story about how we can set it right.

"We need to encourage this kind of change all across America. We need to reward the reforms that are driven not by Washington, but by principals and teachers and parents. That's how we'll make progress in education — not from the top down, but from the bottom up."

Mr. Obama promoted his Race to the Top initiative, which has states compete for education money. But the program has drawn criticism and Republicans on Capitol Hill are unwilling to devote new money to it. He also renewed his call for Congress to send him a rewrite of No Child Left Behind, the nation's governing education law.

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