President Obama delivered his second State of the Union address Tuesday night. With great fervor, he spoke about our country’s education system, our need for innovation, and our strides toward national security.

He was his usual calm, cool, collective self. He articulated his points with poignant clarity. His voice was stern and uncompromising.

But if you listened closely, you could hear the compassion and sincerity in his numerous requests for bipartisan cooperation.

This is the stuff that provokes vigorous applause and emotional response from the hands of otherwise reserved Democrats.

It is the same stuff that causes Republicans to shuffle uncomfortably in their seats, their feet planted firmly in the floor.

It is the Obama Effect.

President Barack Obama is a finely tuned orator. There is no doubt about it. It is part of the reason why he was elected into office.

The man opens his mouth and for a second, you become so lost in his words that you have, yes, the audacity to believe that the words that he speaks can transcend the reality that we live. It gets me every time.

But last night, for whatever reason, I was able to zone out for a while and to evaluate the president’s speech.

And the score card changed dramatically because this time, the points weren’t given for creative vocabulary.

It wasn’t about how well the speech flowed or how many standing ovations he received.

It was less about what I heard in this annual address and more about what I have seen in my neighborhood, in my state, and most importantly, in my school.

There is no other country on the place of the planet where I would rather live. But it seems to me that the United States holds a monopoly on the title of “The Best Country in the World.”

After a while, though, you start to wonder what criteria are being used to measure this unparalleled level of greatness.

If it is education, maybe we should re-evaluate some things.

With all of the comparative points in President Obama’s speech, I started to wonder if he was coming to the same conclusion as I was.

That is, until he finally said it. As a country, he concluded that in some areas we are “losing our grip.”

He continued to reveal the dark truth. “A quarter of our students aren’t graduating,” he said. He went on to acknowledge that our education system “lags behind” that of other countries.

“In South Korea, teachers are known as nation builders. Here in America, it’s time we treat our teachers with the same level of respect,” he said. But how can we show that same level of respect to our teachers if we refuse to reverence our education system with an even higher level of respect?

With initiatives like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, we make education more of a temporary competition than a lifelong experience.

Numbers matter. But these initiatives focus more on the numbers on standardized tests and not the numbers of students who walk across the stage with diplomas in hand – much less the percentage of those students who are able to find jobs or enroll in higher education.

We don’t give schools the attention they deserve until these numbers make headlines because they are so low.

And then, instead of infusing funds into the schools that need them most, we threaten to take them away.

This is how we do education.

This is how we treat our students. They are merely players on the team and education is merely a competition.

Regardless of what the numbers say, if we continue this approach, not only are we losing the game, we are cheating our children.

As it pertains to education, we are so torn as a nation.

Education is always the first thing mentioned in presidential speeches and the last thing considered in federal funding.

And President Obama’s words, as well as the words of presidents who preceded him, are so beautiful.

It is the heart-string-pulling, bring-a-tear-to-your-eye, patriotic rhetoric that puts people in office.

But if we do not act on it at the end of the day, that is all it is – rhetoric.

So to the president, and to every politician who has worked their way into the White House on a platform of improving education, I want to say one thing.

I want to say to you what my mother says to me when I mess up – when I tell her I’m sorry for giving less than my absolute best.

Don’t tell me. Show me.

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