Michael Bennet Quotations

To protect our country's economic future and the health and well being of all Americans, we must find a way to rein in out-of-control costs, provide quality, affordable health care choices to all, and make outrageous insurance industry abuses a thing of the past.

What I came away with last week was a very strong sense that the kids had been marooned up there. They're in a place where opportunities continue to shrink and were going to continue to shrink and that creates a frame of reference for what it is possible to achieve. It begins to lower the standards of expectation for your life.

I believe there's not a harder job in the world than being a teacher, and there isn't a job with a more direct impact on the performance of our students.

If teaching isn't rewarding and challenging, we're going to continue to lose our best teachers to work in other fields.

I think the inhabitants of the past are fighting hard to keep the rents they acquired in the 20th century.

Our goal was to not let them have any runs. We let them have one run and that's what you get. They're that good, they can strike so fast.

Our ability to compete for the jobs of tomorrow depends, above all, on our capacity to educate children today.

My time at the Denver Public Schools taught me there is no harder, or more important, job than being a teacher.

I think if we can get people focused to do what we need to do to keep our kids from being stuck with this debt that they didn't accrue, you might be surprised at how far we can move this conversation.

We've got a lot of work to do: not only on education, but on the economy, on our tax code, and on reducing our crushing debt.

While NCLB drove important progress on transparency and data disaggregation, I think it's clear that the status quo in public education is not working for our kids or our country.

To me, the burden of proof isn't on people looking for ways to improve our schools; it's on people who want to keep things the same. Our current system isn't working, and too many kids are being left behind.

We are excited about the opportunities the Toyota Family Literacy Program will bring to Denver. Strengthening the literacy skills of the entire family is bound to produce results among our students. The additional resources provided to make this program available are much appreciated as is the network of educational, nonprofit and corporate organizations that makes this possible.

Facebook is by far the largest of these social networking sites, and starting with its ill-fated Beacon service, privacy concerns have more than once been raised about how the ubiquitous social networking site handles its user data.

There is simply no way we are going to make progress on the enormous challenges we face without making hard choices. It's impossible.

When I was superintendent of Denver Public Schools, I saw the potential of some of our best and brightest students cut short, punished for the actions of others - kids who had grown up and done well in our school system, and kids who know no other home but America. This is unacceptable.

Very very difficult for the board. We've got to do something about our failing schools in this district.

Often times, political games prevent senators from even beginning to debate some of the most important issues.

A student who has excelled in the classroom should have the opportunity to attend college and become a productive, taxpaying member of society.

As we all become increasingly reliant on social networking websites and new technologies to stay connected, it's important to remain cognizant of how private personal information and data is handled.

It shouldn't take this to be able to have the conversation we're having. What you have in front of you is a confession on the part of this district that we can't provide an education at that school for the kids that are there today.

Study after study affirms what I saw in the classroom every day as superintendent of Denver Public Schools: Nothing makes a bigger difference for student learning than great teaching.

Teacher compensation isn't the only factor in cultivating great teaching. Other important priorities include changing how we measure student performance, providing more flexibility to teacher-preparation programs, and improving how we train and support principals.

I've focused on making sure we have talented teachers and principals in our schools through proposals like the GREAT Teachers and Principals Act and the Presidential Teachers Corps.

Social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr provide an unparalleled ability for people to stay connected in new and unique ways.

I'm not a career politician, so the ways of Washington may be a little obscure to me.

If we, as individuals, want to keep control of our democracy - rather than have a government paid for by corporate interest checks - then we have to fight back now and make sure our system reflects the belief that people, not corporations, control our democracy.

In my mind, there is no reason public school reform should be a partisan issue.

I am most interested in the outcomes at schools and school districts and ensuring that all kids are prepared for college and a career in the 21st-century job market.

I believe people I represent still aspire to the idea that our job as a generation is to provide more opportunity to the people coming after us, not less.

In this day and age of digital media, as we've learned, it's not as though nobody's going to find out what you said.

I was never up four percent.

You know a Senate race is obviously a much smaller deal than a presidential race. What I think makes a very hard job considerably easier when you're going to debate is if you have reminded yourself - or somebody has reminded you during the course of your campaign - that consistency is enormously important. That people don't want to hear you say one thing in one part of the state and another thing in another part of the state.

It's nice to have a debate in a swing state.

Health care is much the same - the status quo is, by all measures, failing far too many people - and we must not shrink from the challenge.

Improving some of the rules under which the Senate functions can begin to replace some of the bad habits Washington has developed with better ones.

To get enough of the teachers we need, teaching has to be a great job where talented people are supported and rewarded.

Colorado's majestic landscapes are one of our most valuable assets, and it's important that we work to preserve these treasures.

I think about Aaron Rodgers, he's like Chris Evans before he got the HGH injection in Captain America. But before he was super smart and was still witty and stuff. That's how I see Tom Brady.

There are many miles to go before we get this done ... But I have a feeling that ... we're going to have a big bipartisan vote for this in the end. My sense is that people are more optimistic than they've been in 20 years about addressing this problem.

Ensuring all kids have access to an effective, talented teacher needs to be a national priority.