Teachers support evaluations based on multiple measures: student growth, classroom observation and feedback from peers and parents.

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.

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.

There's so much that we're doing wrong today. And studies show we're one of three countries that doesn't invest more in disadvantaged communities.

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

Teachers support evaluations based on multiple measures: student growth, classroom observation and feedback from peers and parents.

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.