I Think It's My Job To Tell

This Is A Devastating Problem, Is, The Longer Our Children Are In School, The Worse They Do. Year After Year After Year, Our Children In America Are Falling Further Behind. Our 3- And 4-year-olds Enter Kindergarten Ok, And They Fall Further And Further Behind. Each Year, Children In Other Countries Are Learning More Than Children In This Country. And So The Gap Between American Student Performance In Singapore And Finland And South Korea And Canada And These Other Countries, The Gap Widens Year After Year After Year.

If Children Are Hungry, They Need To Be Fed. It's Hard To Learn If Your Stomach Is Growling. We Need To Take That On. If Students Can't See The Blackboard, Need Eyeglasses, We Need To Do That. If Students Need A Social Worker Or Counselor To Work Through The Challenges They're Facing At Home In The Community, We Need To Do That.

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.

Whether You Look At These Recent Pisa Results, Which We Are Mediocre At Best, Whether You Look At A 25 Percent Dropout Rate In This Country, Whether You Look At, In One Generation, We're Not Doing What We Need To Be Doing To Keep America Great.

To Be Clear, We The Department Of Education Want Curriculum To Be Driven By The Local Level. We Are By Law Prohibited From Directing Curriculum. We Don't Have A Curriculum Department.