of obama: "bad teachers need to be fired..."

Obama takes questions on economy: President Obama held the first evening press conference of his presidency Monday, with the financial crisis as the main topic. Before taking questions, he gave a brief speech.

And I think that both sides are going to have to acknowledge we're going to need more money for new science labs, to pay teachers more effectively, but we're also going to need more reform, which means that we've got to train teachers more effectively, bad teachers need to be fired after being given the opportunity to train effectively, that we should experiment with things like charter schools that are innovating in the classroom, that we should have high standards.

Read the full transcript here.