I worry when athletes are simply used by their universities to produce revenue, to make money for them, nothing to show at the back end. I grew up with a lot of players who had very, very tough lives after the ball started bouncing for them. And that's why I'm going to continue to fight.

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.

Education is the civil rights issue of our generation.

The jobs of the future, as you know so well, are knowledge-based. You need college-educated folks to do this work. And so the consequences for our country are absolutely devastating if we don't start to behave in very different ways.

Even in a time of fiscal austerity, education is more than just an expense.

There was nothing more important I could do than be supportive as a dad.

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.