States Should Not Balance Their Budgets On

Other Countries Have Outeducated Us. They Have Made This A Priority. And A Big Part Of What I'm Trying To Do, Frankly, Is Raise The Profile Of Education And Get America To Wake Up.

If The Goal Is To Dramatically Improve College Completion Rates, Not College-going Rates By Itself But College Completion, It's Not Just A College Problem. We Need A Big Focus On Early Childhood Education. Our Early Childhood Education System Is Pretty Good In This Country. Not Enough Students Have Opportunity. And, Very Discouragingly, They Lose Their Advantage Because They Go To Poor Schools After That. So, Let's Focus On Our Babies.

Wherever You Find Something Extraordinary, You’ll Find The Fingerprints Of A Great Teacher.

When Schools Truly Become Centers Of The Community, Where You Have Extraordinary Teachers, The Best Teachers, The Best Principals, Great Nonprofit Partners Coming In During The Non-school Hours To Support And Do Enrichment Activities, Social Services, Then Those Students Will Beat The Odds, Will Beat Poverty, Will Beat Violence In The Community, Will Beat Sometimes Dysfunctional Families, And Be Productive Citizens Long Term. They Will Go To College.

I'm Just Absolutely Convinced We Have To Educate Our Way To A Better Economy. That's The Only Way We're Going To Get There. This Is The Best Long-term Investment We Can Make. And So I Think It's My Job To Be The Truth-teller.