As a former high school teacher I know that investing in education is one of the most important things we can do not only for our children but for the benefit of our whole community.

I'm not only a lawyer I have a post doctorate degree in federal tax law from William and Mary. I work in serious scholarship and work in the United States federal tax court. My husband and I raised five kids. We've raised 23 foster children. We've applied ourselves to education reform. We started a charter school for at-risk kids.

I thought if anyone need a leg up it was our foster children. So I started getting involved in education reform and that was back in 1998. And as a result of all the reform work that I had done people urged me to run for the Minnesota state Senate. I did I was there for six years.

I've got a very deep and abiding passion about education being far more than buildings and textbooks it's what children bring into school with them.

But the best thing Washington can do for education is realize that our role is limited. Washington must keep its promises but let those who know our childrens' names- parents teachers and school board members- make education decisions.

What the mayors care about is 'How can I get money to invest in the infrastructure in my city? How do we put people back to work lower the unemployment rate provide for job training programs? How do we make class sizes smaller and make investments in our children from an education standpoint?'

When the state or federal government control the education of all of our children they have the dangerous and illegitimate monopoly to control and influence the thought process of our citizens.

Many seventh graders I know in Illinois as well as around the Nation are studying the Constitution. I was pretty impressed with the quality of education our children are receiving because they had not expected me to ask them about it.

I knew from a young age that I wanted to be an actor. I never even thought about other careers. The acting field is certainly not the path many Indian parents encourage their children to take but mine were very supportive. They wanted me to have an education but understood that this is what I wanted to do.

Parents should conduct their arguments in quiet respectful tones but in a foreign language. You'd be surprised what an inducement that is to the education of children.

Education makes children less dependent upon others and opens doors to better jobs and career possibilities.

So what it boils down to in my humble opinion is that we need to support the arts in schools and at every other level in the education of children.

My job is to make sure that if you're a family in Florida your children can get a good education and you have the opportunity for a job. That's my job and that's what I think about every day.

We're failing our children with education we're failing our environment.

Unfortunately the real achievements of children on the ground became debased and devalued because Labor education secretaries sounded like Soviet commissars praising the tractor production figures when we know that those exams were not the rock-solid measures of achievement that children deserve.

I hope to focus on what I'm passionate about because I think I'd do them best job on them - education urban education women and children's issues and literacy.

I'm sure everything has a bearing on what I'm doing. My family is a lower-middle-class family there's lots of children seven brothers two sisters grew up together fighting with each other went to school. My mother went to school up to 4th grade. My father went to school up to 8th grade. So that's about the education level we had in the family.

Interactions between fathers and children are the starting point of education.

There have been studies that clearly state that children who are exposed to arts education at a young age will in fact do markedly better in their SAT tests.

I really owe everything to my parents and their devotion and drive to see to it that their children had the education which led to the opportunities that they never were able to have.

When women earn the money for the family everyone in the family benefits. We also know that when women have an income everyone wins because women dedicate 90% of the income to health education to food security to the children to the family or to the community so when women have an income everybody wins.

An arts education helps build academic skills and increase academic performance while also providing alternative opportunities to reward the skills of children who learn differently.

Economic prosperity and quality education for our children are inexorably linked.

What makes me angry? The education of children. How in God's name can you expect to have a functioning society the way we teach our kids?