Education

Congresswoman Pelosi stops by the South of Market Child Care Center in San Francisco to support hard-working child care providers and children who are benefiting from an early education.

Education is the single most important investment a nation can make in its future and a family can make in its children. Nothing brings more revenue to the United States Treasury than investments in education, whether it is early childhood education, kindergarten to 12th grade, higher education, post-graduate or lifetime learning.

Early childhood learning programs have proven to be one of the most valuable investments in our children’s future, dramatically increasing their ability to succeed later in school and in life. By expanding access to affordable, high-quality early learning opportunities, our nation’s future will see better educational outcomes, stronger job earnings and lower crime rates. By implementing universal pre-kindergarten programs, increasing access to Head Start and Early Head Start for low-income families and mitigating the achievement gap as early as possible will ensure our nation’s competitiveness in a global economy.

Despite the highest on record graduation rate of 83%, our work is not done in the classroom for our students, teachers and communities. For the first time in 50 years, a majority of public school students in our country live in poverty. We must continue to fight for educational equity to close the achievement gap, focus on career and college pipelines and continue to open doors of opportunity for all students, regardless of their zip code. I stood proud of the signing of Every Student Succeeds Act, which honors the civil rights legacy of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act through its inclusion of strong federal guardrails to maintain high standards and promote educational opportunity for historically disadvantaged students.

One of the most critical factors in determining a child's success in school is their teacher, who perform miracles every day in our under-funded and over-crowded school system. To produce a highly competitive and innovative workforce tomorrow, we must attract the best qualified teachers to our classrooms today. By strengthening training, recruitment and retention, we will ensure our students are ready for the challenges of tomorrow by bolstering support for our teachers and school leaders. If we want our students, teachers, school leaders and communities to succeed, we must also fight for investments that modernize our classrooms, close the digital gap, focus on school readiness, expand STEAM capacity in our schools, improve school climate, and commit to fully funding special education once and for all.

It took a Democratic majority in 2010 to pass the single largest investment history to aid to help students and families pay for college with the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act. By strengthening the Pell Grant program, keeping interest rates low on subsidized federal student loans, ensuring borrowers repay their loans at an affordable rate, and establishing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, Democrats have stood tall on reducing the crushing burden of student loan debt.

Yet, over 43 million Americans face $1.3 trillion in student loan debt and approximately one-third of all student loan dollars are in default, forbearance or deferment. I have long-supported The Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act, which enables borrowers to refinance their federal and private student loans and lock in lower interest rates for up to over 2.2 million federal student loan borrowers in California. We must restore year-round Pell Grants and ensure the program is sustainable for years to come, protect campus-based aid programs like Work-Study options and Perkins, boost investments in Minority-Serving Institutions and our indispensable community colleges that equip students with cutting-edge skills to keep America number one.

Learn more about the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act>>

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