Education

Over the past thirty years, the cost of attending college has risen more than 1,000 percent. Studies show that in the next decade alone, financial barriers will prevent at least 4.4 million high school graduates from attending a four-year public college. The nationwide average student loan debt is now more than $26,000 per borrower. Alarmingly, Connecticut's average is even worse, with the average debt for the class of 2014 climbing higher than $28,000 per student. This is unacceptable. Higher education must be more affordable.

Access to affordable, quality higher education is critical for America to remain competitive in the 21st century global economy, but soaring college costs are putting higher education out of reach for too many Americans. But while Congress has been focused on year to year extensions of federal student loan interest rates, it’s missing the bigger picture: our focus should be on bringing down the overall cost of a college education. As a member of the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions, making college more affordable remains one of my top priorities. I believe we need to examine whether or not certain degrees can be completed in a shorter amount of time, and how schools can use innovation and accountability to lower the cost of college for students across the country. Students should be able to earn a degree based on their work ethic and intellect, not the size of their bank accounts. I’ll be working to make sure colleges do their part to keep costs down.

As a parent to two young boys, the quality of pre-K, elementary, and secondary education is now personal to me.  As test scores for our young students fall further and further behind those of our economic competitors, it’s clear that we have a bigger problem than simply an underfunded education system.  We need more results-based accountability.  While the education reforms enacted through No Child Left Behind identified underperforming and failing schools, it didn’t implement successful systems for improvement and accountability.  Good schools and good teachers should be rewarded, but bad schools and bad teachers should be helped, not simply labeled.  It’s time to start thinking out of the box when it comes to local education – Connecticut can’t continue to pack intense poverty into a handful of neighborhoods and expect schools in those areas to overcome, by themselves, the educational consequences of poverty by themselves.  New ideas that are proven to work need to be expanded quickly, rather than just studied and debated for another decade.

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