If these 100 people were children in poverty in our country, eighth graders, 15 of them would be proficient in math.

I would argue strongly for at the national level, since Federal spending is only 10 percent of K-12, to invest in more competitive funding for school systems.

there is not a person in this Chamber, I guarantee you, who does not go home at the end of the week and hear from people of their State--Democrats, Republicans, or unaffiliated voters--``what in the world are you guys doing back there…

I think our goal is to make credit available.

The problem with that is that kids end up in institutions where they are not learning anything year after year after year, and they just fall farther and farther behind.

On the human capital question that you were raising at the end about finding administrators, finding teachers in rural areas, we face this in my State of Colorado as well.

I think maybe one way to think about that is there is a difference between giving people the flexibility to do something and giving people the flexibility to do nothing, which has been the outcome in too many places I think.

I stand here today for the millions of Coloradans and American families who are sick and tired of the name calling, the bickering, and the partisanship in Washington. I am here today for over 800,000 uninsured Coloradans who will now have…

Teaching has a much different level of public support and stature in those countries than what we have had in ours.

There is not a harder job in the country than being a teacher in an urban or rural school district with children that are living in poverty.

I think part of this is going to be solved by all of us kind of getting out of our own way here and creating politics that will allow us to make revolutionary change, not just evolutionary change.

I think that is such an important point because when I was superintendent, if you blindfolded me, I didn't know whether I was talking to a university president or somebody that was running the apprentice shop for the trades, I would hear…