Education

Education makes us human. Education opens up new opportunities, teaches us about the world around us; affects how we view life, learn of opportunities available to us. Education teaches us how to learn and opens worlds beyond itself. Education is at the core of human advancement.

Education puts one's potential to maximum use. One can safely say that a human has not reached their potential without education. Education is the training of the mind to think and only through education can a person open themselves to the world and have the tools to understand and process that they learn.

My mother had an expression: 'children tend to become that which you expect of them'. America is a country where we need to expect more from our children. Every child must graduate from high school and every qualified student must, at a minimum, be guaranteed access to an associate's (two year) degree.

We are presently far from that place. Two thirds of the students entering high school this year will graduate, but for every 100 ninth graders, just 18 will earn a college degree. As President, I will set four goals for American students: (1) start earlier, (2) have access to well paid, qualified teachers; (3) reduce class sizes; (4) graduate every student from high school and help those qualified to go onto college.

If there is one thing we know from experience, it is that the child that goes to 'pre-school', who has the books, the structure and the activities, who starts better prepared, has a better chance at making it to middle school with 'grade level' reading and math skills, and the better shot of graduating and going on to college. Of kids from similar backgrounds, those who had access to quality 'pre-schooling' graduated from high school in much higher numbers. The lesson: start early means finish strong.

There are four million 'four year olds' in the United States and four million 'three year olds. America must have a preschool system that accommodates them all. We can start down that path by fully funding 'Head Start' so that we double the number of children it serves, and quadruple the number of toddlers in 'Early Start'.

Increasing access to higher education is essential. Pell Grants and incentives to pay for college haven't kept pace with rising tuition costs. Joe Biden's 'College Access Plan' would expand the incentive for middle class families, paying for college by creating a refundable $3000 tax credit, which would cover the average tuition at two-year colleges. The Access Plan would expand Pell Grants to $5100 next year and to $6300 in five years. I support setting goals; start talking to kids in the eighth grade about their plans for a higher education, helping them to become aware of the things that are available to them to pursue a higher education, helping them to start dreaming of their future at an early age.

In between this early start and strong finish, let's focus our national education policy on two goals: small classes, committed teachers. We can do this by attracting good people to the profession and retaining the good teachers we have.

Of all new teachers 25% will leave the profession within five years, costing our schools $2 billion a year. We can transform the way we prepare and support our teachers and we can improve teacher pay. We can fund mentoring and induction programs for new teachers and we can create a scholarship program to increase the supply of high quality teachers, providing them with scholarship monies to defray the costs of education, in exchange for a four years commitment. We could do even more, designing incentives to reward high quality, effective professional development like National Board Certification.

In today's competitive global economy, the value and importance of a highly educated work force cannot be understated. Yet a college degree is fast becoming a 'luxury good' beyond the reach of middle class families. It has been estimated that over the next decade, two million 'college ready' students are in danger of foregoing college, simply because they can't afford it... Joe Biden's College Access Act will make college affordable.

Joe Biden has proposed expanding the eligibility for tax credits to ease the burden of paying for college, broadening the income limits, which would result in increasing the eligibility requirements for approximately four million hard working American families. And beyond these incentives, Biden has proposed that the income limits, and the 'phase out range' for the credit be adjusted annually for inflation.