Before the controversy over President Obama’s speech to schoolkids fades too far into the distance, it might be worth noting one amusing but under-reported angle. Eighteen years ago, the first President Bush also gave a speech to schoolchildren. Like Obama’s, it was full of sound advice—“Don’t let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams,“ for instance. Unlike Obama’s, it wasn’t broadcast across the land. There was no study guide.

Now that the president has delivered his address to schoolchildren across the country—or at least some of them; many school districts, including most in Central Virginia, opted out—perhaps the nation will regain its senses. The speech was perfectly innocuous, and no different from one a thousand schools have heard some variation of a thousand times before. The only difference between the president’s address and countless other work-hard-and-apply-yourself soporifics is that the Obama administration decided it was worth broadcasting across the country, instead of picking just one schoolhouse to inflict it upon.

ARLINGTON (AP)—In a pep talk that kept clear of politics, President Barack Obama today challenged the nation’s students to take pride and ownership in their education—and stick with it even if they don’t like every class or must overcome tough circumstances at home.

Next week President Barack Obama will visit Wakefield High School in Arlington. He will deliver a speech that will be broadcast to students across America via C-SPAN and the White House Web site. In many schools activity will stop so youngsters can watch their president. Powhatan has opted not to join them; Henrico will make viewing available but not required.

New data from the Census Bureau show Virginia ranks 17th in the nation for per-pupil spending. Each Virginia pupil was the beneficiary of (on average) $10,210 in the 2006-07 school year—an 8 percent increase over the previous academic year. State figures show per-pupil spending rose another 8 percent from 2006-07 to 2007-08. Some think Virginia should increase spending even faster than that. The common assumption seems to be that bigger dollar inputs will lead to better outcomes. Maybe so—and maybe not.

The profession of teaching is a noble calling, so the National Education Association’s misrepresentation of current policy debates is especially dismaying. The NEA has lambasted the Obama administration’s support for charter schools, standardized testing, and merit pay. “We urge the administration to step outside of this narrow agenda,“ the NEA says.

For 15 Richmond teachers, the path to a graduate degree is about to get a whole lot cheaper. The city’s school system recently received a nearly $1 million 2009 Teaching American History grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Richmond is one of six school systems statewide and one of 123 in the nation to receive such a grant. The program will pay for the teachers to complete three-year master’s degrees in curriculum and instruction for history and social studies at the University of Richmond. Another 30 teachers will be able to take workshops and participate in other professional development programs. Some teachers will also work with UR President Edward L. Ayers on a project to integrate digital technology in the classroom.

The Chesterfield County School Board voted unanimously last night to collect data on students who are children of active-duty military personnel and federally employed parents. The information will be used to apply for annual grants expected to bring up to $500,000 from the U.S. Department of Education’s Impact Aid program. The program pays school districts for students who are children of active-duty personnel and parents living in Chesterfield and employed on any federal property in Virginia.

Virginia is one of 46 states lined up in support of the campaign led by Washington-based lobbyists and backed by the Obama administration to write National Education Standards. The collaborationists are starting with reading and math. The first draft from the Common Core State Standards “work groups” assembled by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association makes one wonder if Virginia would be taking a step backward by ditching its standards (generally acknowledged to be among the nation’s strongest) in favor of the nationalized version.

Among the greatest frustrations that beset parents of schoolchildren is the sense that they are forever being nickle-and-dimed to death by ancillary fees, for everything from field trips to classroom supplies. Isn’t this what they pay taxes for? It’s a good question—particularly given the rapid rate of growth in state expenditures for education, which ranks among the fastest-growing segments of the state budget pie-chart. (From the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, state spending on education grew four times faster than enrollment, for instance.)

The Virginia Board of Education is taking an appropriately deliberate approach to the matter of capping funding for support-staff ratios in the public schools. Lawmakers and Gov. Tim Kaine agreed this year to cap funding for a ratio of support personnel to instructional personnel—i.e., teachers—of roughly 1:4. The question is whether to make such a policy permanent.

In America, school choice is widespread—unless you’re poor. In few places is this truer than in Virginia. Middleand upper-income families can exercise school choice by moving to one of the many suburban districts surrounding cities like my hometown of Richmond. They can also maneuver through the system to send their kids to the few really good public schools that exist in cities like Richmond, allowing them to feel virtuous for supporting the “public schools” while protecting their children from the problems that plague the schools overall. Or, as many of the families in my old neighborhood did, they simply opt out by sending their children to one of the popular private schools in the area.

Side Effects Virginia legislators are understandably concerned about a recent, and now repudiated, proposal to do away with the history portion of the Standards of Learning for the third grade. (Earlier editorials discussed the particulars at length. Elswhere in today’s Commentary section we reprint a letter from former gov. George Allen on the subject.)

New British government guidance tells teachers not to pass on the rule to students, because there are too many exceptions.

The Obama administration has a message for Virginia: If you want to be eligible for certain stimulus money, embrace charter schools. Education Secretary Arne Duncan didn’t single out the Old Dominion the other day when he said, “States that do not have public charter laws or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools will jeopardize their applications under the Race to the Top Fund.“ And it’s not clear whether “artificial caps” refers to statutory funding ceilings, or merely to laws that impede charter schools from growing at their natural rate.