Borrowing to pay for college used to be the exception; now it's the rule.

To encourage more top-caliber students to choose teaching, teachers should be paid a lot more, with starting salaries more in the range of $60,000 and potential earnings of as much as $150,000.

A postsecondary education is the ticket to economic success in America.

About two-thirds of bachelor's degree holders borrow to go to school, and on average they're graduating with more than $26,000 in debt.

Almost 24 million children - one in three - are likely growing up without their father involved in their lives.

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

I think every student needs access to technology, and I think technology can be a hugely important vehicle to help level the playing field.

Money is not the reason that people enter teaching.

So instead of watching TV, we read every night together as a family.

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.

The cost of college should never discourage anyone from going after a valuable degree.

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

When I ask teachers why they teach, they almost always say that it is because they want to make a difference in the lives of children.

At a time when going to college has never been more important, it's never been more expensive, and our nation's families haven't been in this kind of financial duress since the great depression. And so what we have is just sort of a miraculous opportunity simply by stopping the subsidy to banks when we already have the risk of loans. We can plow those savings into our students. And we can make college dramatically more affordable, tens of billions of dollars over the next decade.

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.

Most teachers still say they love teaching though they wouldn't mind a little more respect for their challenging work and a little less blame for America's educational shortcomings.

Research shows that children do better in school and are less likely to drop out when fathers are involved. Engaged parents can strengthen communities, mentor and tutor students, and demonstrate through their actions how much they value their children's education.

State governments generate less revenue in a recession. As state leaders struggle to make up for lost revenue, legislatures tend to cut funding for higher education. Colleges, in turn, answer these funding cuts with tuition hikes.

Surveys show that many talented and committed young people are reluctant to enter teaching for the long haul because they think the profession is low-paying and not prestigious enough.