Biography

U.S. secretary of education (21 January 2009 - ?).

Chief executive officer of the Chicago, Illinois public school system, June 2001 - December 2008.

Education is the ultimate bipartisan, nonpartisan issue. There's nothing Republican or Democrat about more kids having access to pre-K. There's nothing Republican or Democrat about raising high school graduation rates. There's nothing liberal or conservative about having more young people prepared to go to college and being able to afford it.

I will challenge all of us, frankly. As voters, wherever we are in that political spectrum to vote for political candidates at the local and state and national level who will put their reputations behind improving educational opportunity. And that's honestly what does not happen. We don't go to the voting booth thinking about education. And I, again, I don't really blame the politicians. I put the onus on us is voter

We have to invest our school system still don't have the PPE they need. They don't have the cleaning supplies they need. We just need to have a major investment. When you see property taxes, sales taxes, and the local state level go down so significantly. The only way to backfill is that the federal level, and again, the absence of leadership there has been unbelievably disturbing

So we know the children, the communities who are most marginalized, most vulnerable have been the hardest hit by this. We have to really do all this work with an equity lens, with a real sense of what's fair and how do we help every child reach their real potential.

We need to reinvent. We need to reimagine what education looks like ... Why do we have summers off? It makes no sense. We have so many kids that are so far behind now. Our kids aren't working in the fields anymore. Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy. ... We need more time. We have to get that to them