When you're educated, you must offer others a road to success.

Teachers do the noble work of educating our children. And we can't thank them enough for the hard work they put in every day to ensure a bright future for all of us.

In any community there's a strong pull home. People want to return, see their community get better economically and socially. You can build those community-grown opportunities for the kids who've graduated from college to return home, to provide businesses and support things going on. It'll only happen through education.

Our public education system does a great job. I don't think it's broken. We aren't interested in doing reform for reform's sake. I believe in public education; it did a great job for me. It deserves our support and encouragement.

Children are coming to school with trauma, everyday trauma, that they live under: violence in the homes, alcoholism in the community, unemployment thats 80 percent, not just during the recession. We need to help treat that before they can even go sit in a class and learn about math.

For some students, school is the only place where they get a hot meal and a warm hug. Teachers are sometimes the only ones who tell our children they can go from an Indian reservation to the Ivy League, from the home of a struggling single mom to the White House.

My parents told me that education was the path to success - and they showed me, taking me to Head Start while they were pursuing their own college degrees.