September 27, 2010 | 11:55 AM | By

President Obama on D.C.’s Public Schools

FILED UNDER: Education, Obama, Schools

President Obama being interviewed on TODAY.

Earlier this morning, on NBC’s TODAY show, Matt Lauer sat down with President Barack Obama to discuss education. The President took a question posed by a woman from Florida who asked if his daughters would get the same “high-quality, rigorous education” at one of our city’s public schools as they currently receive at “their very elite private academy“.

The President said:

Well thanks for the question. I’ll be blunt with you, the answer is No right now. The DC public school systems are struggling. Now, they have made some important strides over the last several years to move in the direction of reform. There are some terrific individual schools in the DC system. And that’s true by the way in every city across the country….some great public schools on par with any private school in the country. But…a lot of times you’ve got to test in or it’s a lottery pick for you to be able to get into those schools, so those options are not available for enough children.

I’ll be very honest with you. Given my position, if I wanted to find a great public school for Malia and Sasha to be in, we could probably maneuver to do it. But the broader problem is for a mom or a dad who are working hard but don’t have a bunch of connections, don’t have a lot of choice in terms of where they live, they should be getting the same quality education for their kids as anybody else. And we don’t have that yet.

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DCentric was created to examine the ways race and class interact in Washington, D.C., a city with a vibrant mix of cultures and neighborhoods. Your guides to the changing district are reporters Anna John and Elahe Izadi. View all posts by Anna →