I Think It's My Job To Tell

In America, Your Zip Code Or Your Socioeconomic Status Should Never Determine The Quality Of Your Education.

My Vision Is That Schools Need To Be Community Centers. Schools Need To Be Open 12, 13, 14 Hours A Day Six, Seven Days A Week, 12 Months Out Of The Year, With A Whole Host Of Activities, Particularly In Disadvantaged Communities.

At A Time When Going To College Has Never Been More Important, It's Never Been More Expensive, And Our Nation's Families Haven't Been In This Kind Of Financial Duress Since The Great Depression. And So What We Have Is Just Sort Of A Miraculous Opportunity Simply By Stopping The Subsidy To Banks When We Already Have The Risk Of Loans. We Can Plow Those Savings Into Our Students. And We Can Make College Dramatically More Affordable, Tens Of Billions Of Dollars Over The Next Decade.

The Only Way We Get Better Is To Look In The Mirror, Assess Our Strengths And Weaknesses, And Figure Out Where We Need To Go. But If We Run Around Saying, We're Number One, We're Number One, And We're Not, That Doesn't Help Us Get Where We Need To Go.

We Need To Invest In Very Different Ways. Get The Students The Support They Need, Get Them The Best Principals, Get Them The Great Teachers, And I Promise You Those Students Would Do Extraordinarily Well. I Have Seen It All My Life.