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The White House has said the program, which encourages schools to apply new teaching methods and tie teacher salaries to student test scores, is central to Obama's efforts to reform the US educational system.
Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign Obama decried the state of the US educational system, lamenting its slipping place in world rankings and arguing that a return to higher standards was the only way to ensure the country's economic future.
A 2008 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranked the United States 13th for the percentage of its population who have completed upper secondary education, behind such countries as South Korea, Slovenia and Canada.
US students also lag behind their counterparts in industrialized nations in science and math, according to a 2006 OECD ranking, which found US 15-year-olds scored lower than the OECD average in both subjects.
In an interview published in Friday's edition of The Washington Post, Obama said the "Race to the Top" program would support semi-private charter schools and performance-related pay for teachers, both strongly opposed by some in the country's highly decentralized education sector.
"If there are states that just don't want to go in this direction, that's their prerogative," Obama said.
"What we're saying here is, if you can't decide to change these practices, we're not going to use precious dollars that we want to see creating better results; we're not going to send those dollars there."
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Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign Obama decried the state of the US educational system, lamenting its slipping place in world rankings and arguing that a return to higher standards was the only way to ensure the country's economic future.
A 2008 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranked the United States 13th for the percentage of its population who have completed upper secondary education, behind such countries as South Korea, Slovenia and Canada.
US students also lag behind their counterparts in industrialized nations in science and math, according to a 2006 OECD ranking, which found US 15-year-olds scored lower than the OECD average in both subjects.
In an interview published in Friday's edition of The Washington Post, Obama said the "Race to the Top" program would support semi-private charter schools and performance-related pay for teachers, both strongly opposed by some in the country's highly decentralized education sector.
"If there are states that just don't want to go in this direction, that's their prerogative," Obama said.
"What we're saying here is, if you can't decide to change these practices, we're not going to use precious dollars that we want to see creating better results; we're not going to send those dollars there."
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