Today President Barack Obama unveiled some of his plans for education system reform in a speech before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. In doing so, he may have just made enemies of a large portion of his party's constituency: teachers' unions. Obama proposes spending additional money to reward effective teachers in up to 150 school districts, and embraces the idea of merit pay. This campaign promise also once earned him jeers from the National Education Association.

Teachers' unions say that merit pay causes teachers to compete against each other, rather than collaborate, and is unfair to those who work in disadvantaged areas where it can be harder to boost student performance.

While teachers strongly oppose this in large numbers, the policy is overwhelming supported by the public according to recent polls.

In addition to rewarding effective teachers, Obama also wishes to push out those who are not getting results. Officials haven't elaborated on how Obama proposes to weed out the bad teachers.

In an attempt to make the merit pay proposal more acceptable to teachers' unions, Obama spoke out against the current standardized tests that are greatly disliked by educators in favor of upgraded assessments and better data systems for tracking student progress. He also plans to tough grants in his budget that would bolster data collection among early education programs.

Obama is also set to address the drop-out rate as "a new national priority", keeping a specific watch on the 2,000 U.S. high schools that produce more than half the country's dropouts. In addition, he will link the growth in Pell Grants to the rate of inflation to ensure regular increases as part of a goal to have the highest proportion of college graduates by 2020.