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.

Whether it's in an inner-city school or a rural community, I want those students to have a chance to take A.P. biology and A.P. physics and marine biology.

To encourage more top-caliber students to choose teaching, teachers should be paid a lot more, with starting salaries more in the range of $60,000 and potential earnings of as much as $150,000.

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.

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.

When I ask teachers why they teach, they almost always say that it is because they want to make a difference in the lives of children.

Education is the civil rights issue of our generation.