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.

States should not balance their budgets on the backs of students.

Far too many of our children today, our students, need remedial education. We have been lying to them. They're not really ready for college. That's not higher education's fault. That's our fault K-12.

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.

I think every student needs access to technology, and I think technology can be a hugely important vehicle to help level the playing field.

We all have a role to play - the President, Congress, parents, students and schools - in making college affordable and keeping the middle class dream alive.

The arts significantly boost student achievement, reduce discipline problems, and increase the odds students will go on to graduate from college. As First Lady Michelle Obama sums up, both she and the President believe 'strongly that arts education is essential for building innovative thinkers who will be our nation's leaders for tomorrow.'