President Obama and Secretary Duncan are promoting desperately needed education reform by demanding that states abandon failed policies and implement innovative and successful strategies in exchange for federal investment. Obama's bold actions and leadership are essential, but not sufficient, to fix our broken education system. We need leaders and teachers with the same passion, innovation and boldness to step up to the plate and change the way we do business in education. We need to improve dramatically our teacher education system, bid farewell to those who can not or will not educate our children successfully and offer an engaging, relevant and challenging curriculum in our schools.