America has to put a high priority on education, from pre-K through post-PhD. We are more and more rapidly becoming unable to compete with other nations—especially China—in the areas of science and technology. Our high school dropout rate is unacceptably high for all students, but especially for African American and Latino students. Of students who do graduate with a diploma, far too few have the skills they, and America, need in the core areas of reading, writing, and mathematics.

No Child Left Behind has proven to be one more in a long chain of flawed initiatives. It has distorted standards and reporting in order to meet political goals. It blames teachers who ought to be encouraged and lets administrations that fail the test of leadership off the hook. We need management that rewards good teaching and sees that our schools and classrooms are safe and orderly, have adequate resources, and are focused on the learning event, not on serving statistics.

Size of the Problem

It is perilous to ignore our educational problems any longer. In the New York Times of July 29, 2008, the conservative columnist David Brooks came out with a column on education which he called “The Biggest Issue.” He contends that although the problem of rising gas prices is likely to dominate the upcoming election, the "skills slowdown" is actually the biggest issue facing the country —and is the one which "more than any other, will shape the destiny of the nation."

According to the High Tech Indicators study completed at Georgia Tech in Spring, 2008, "Technology products that were not developed in the US are going to be appearing in the marketplace. We won't have had any involvement with them and may not even know they are coming." The authors were specifically writing about China, which has passed the US in their technical achievement score. What applies to consumer products, of course, also applies to weapons, and the idea that we might not even know what military technologies are looming on the horizon is fundamentally scary. We cannot build and maintain a strong economy or provide for the national security if we fail to make our educational system work. That may mean making radical changes, and it definitely means that the new system has to be fully funded. We have no other choice if we want to compete and restore our international lead.

Early Childhood Programs

High quality early childhood learning supports all later learning. We can't begin too early to instill in our children a sense of curiosity and confidence in their own ability to learn. Although all families want the best for their children, not all are equipped with the background and resources to provide good early-learning experiences. For this reason, we have to develop new programs that help provide all of our children with good foundations, and then help them to maximize their learning potential throughout their entire lives. We are past the time for finger-pointing and inaction. America needs to act now, and I want to help that happen.

Scope of Changes

We have no time to lose. We need to move quickly to repair our damaged system, with an eye to

• correcting administrative top heaviness at all program levels, from local to federal
• rewarding not just teacher excellence, but principal and student excellence, as well
• making our schools not only safe but civil places
• increasing the amount and quality of time students spend actively engaged in learning the Three Rs.

The importance of relevant, active learning time cannot be overstressed. To get it, we need to start thinking outside of the box and beyond some of our educational sacred cows. We need to look at programs that work in other countries for new ideas. We may need to take bold actions like increasing the length of both the school day and the school year (with corresponding pay increases for teachers and principals, of course) and come up with far more effective ways than we have at present for dealing with disruptive, disrespectful, disinterested, and chronically truant students. We also need to develop innovative, effective programs that will foster better education-related parenting.

Attitudes towards Public Education

I ache for an America that meets her potential, and I will do all I can to see that we get on track to do so.