All-American Presidential Forums on PBS" Moderated by Tavis Smiley

"We for the first time ever are on a trajectory to ask ourselves as Americans, do we believe every kid ought to get a high quality education? And should we hold ourselves accountable for doing that as a nation?"
Margaret Spellings
U.S. Secretary of Education

Read the interview

EDUCATION

"Whether fair or not, educational opportunity and academic achievement are directly tied to the social divisions associated with race, ethnicity, gender, first language, and social class. The level and quality of educational attainment either open the doors to opportunity or close them."
—Educational psychologist Edmund W. Gordon in The Covenant with Black America

America's current public school system, responsible for educating 87%1 of our nation's school age children, continues to fail many of our children. The United States spends more on education per pupil than almost any other nation, yet lags2 behind many less industrialized nations in standardized science and math scores. Indicative of the mounting challenges that public schools face—more than 1 in 53 public school teachers choose to enroll their own children in private schools. In some metropolitan areas, the rate is even higher.

At the same time that primary and secondary schools struggle to serve their communities, college costs are rising faster4 than the prices for other goods and services. The purchasing power of the federal Pell grants, a staple of aid for low-income students, has declined during the past 25 years.

Twenty years ago, students could count on a Pell grant to cover 35%5 of the total annual cost of attending a public university. In 2003-04, it covered 23%6. Recent efforts to relieve the financial burden by offering federal tax credits and tax deductions have benefited upper-income families, but because of income restrictions and other factors, the majority of low-income families continue to struggle to gain access to higher education.

On the minds of many Americans:

1 School choice—do charter schools help or hinder public schools?

2 Public school funding—how can we direct more funding to classroom resources? Is weighted student funding the answer?

3 "No Child Left Behind"—is it working?

4 Rising college costs—what can we do to keep higher learning accessible to all Americans?

What do you think?

• Sources
• 1 National Center for Education Statistics  (2.1mb, PDF) (Visit website)
• 2 National Center for Education Statistics  (324k, PDF) (Visit website)
• 3 The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation  (Visit website)
• 4 The College Board  (1.5mb, PDF) (Visit website)
• 5 CNN  (Visit website)
• 6 CNN  (Visit website)