President Barack Obama's scheduled visit to Madison Wednesday will be a chance for the president and state officials to talk about how incentives in the federal stimulus bill are spurring education reforms in the state, Gov. Jim Doyle said Thursday.

Doyle is pushing bills to allow schools to use student learning to help evaluate teachers and transfer control of the Milwaukee schools to the city's mayor rather than its school board. Doyle has said those reforms could improve the state's chances of winning a portion of $4.5 billion in "Race to the Top" stimulus funds from the U.S. Department of Education.

At a Capitol news conference dealing with an insurance law change, Doyle said his office had "fully briefed" White House officials on the changes he was seeking.

"I think they see Wisconsin as a state that already has a good educational system but is taking up the challenge of Race to the Top to really take it up a significant level," Doyle said.

The White House announced this week that Obama will visit the Madison area Wednesday to speak about education but has not disclosed further details.

The scheduled trip would coincide with the first anniversary of Obama's election on Nov. 4, 2008, and be his first visit to the area since a February 2008 campaign rally at the Kohl Center before the state's Democratic primary.

As a candidate, Obama was scheduled to return in late October 2008, but canceled a speech outside the Capitol to visit his ailing grandmother, who died a short time later, in Hawaii.

State GOP executive director Mark Jefferson said earlier this week that Obama's visit appears designed to bolster a potential gubernatorial run by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a Democrat.

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