Obama Woos Women With Phony Education Pitch working hard to bring back the women he lost by his terrible and obnoxious debate performance. No longer able to portray Romney as a war monger after Mitt's performance in the third debate, he is intent on using the education issue to lure back women. But don't be fooled! Obama's proposal to hire 100,000 new teachers skirts the main problem. Why will 100,000 new teachers succeed when 3.2 million current teachers are trying? The problem in education is not funding or a lack of teachers, it is the tenure system that keeps bad teachers on the job and the union's opposition to merit pay that stops us from promoting good teachers and paying them top salaries (six figures!). Per pupil spending, adjusted for inflation, has risen from $7500 in 1990 to $10,500 today with no improvement in national test scores. The jurisdiction with the highest per pupil spending (Washington DC at $25,000 per student) also has the lowest graduation rate and the worst test scores. It is only through eliminating tenure, promoting merit pay, and enacting full school choice that public schools will improve. That's the Romney agenda. When Obama says Romney plans to "cut education funding", what he means is cut the federal Department of Education. This useless agency's budget has doubled under Obama. If it were rolled back to its 2008 level, and the money returned to the states -- it could finance a pay raise of $3,000 per teacher. Romney wants to cut the federal education bureaucracy, not education. Unfortunately, Obama doesn't see a difference. The fact is that test scores have not improved under Obama because, for all his posturing in the "race to the top" program, his failure to confront the teachers unions or to support those who do, has consigned schools to permanent mediocrity. Only a national agenda of school choice can free our schools so they can truly excel.