When nearly a third of our high school students do not graduate on time with their peers we have work to do. We must design our middle and high schools so that no student gets lost in the crowd and disconnected from his or her own potential.
When theater becomes a soothing middle-class thing when it's packaged as the Night Out then that's the death of it.
I grew up between the two world wars and received a rather solid general education the kind middle class children enjoyed in a country whose educational system had its roots dating back to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
The last thing I want my child to see is Dad running around in the middle of the pack. That would really upset me. And that would upset him. I would be embarrassed to take him to school with kids saying 'Hey how'd your dad do this weekend?' 'Well he finished fifth or sixth'.
My first memory of the Rolling Stones is listening to 'Satisfaction' at a sixth-grade slumber party at a friend's house in Ankara Turkey where my family was living at the time. In the middle of our sleepover my friend's dad stopped the record when he heard the words 'girlie action!'
In the 'Garnethill' trilogy people always forget that Maureen O'Donnell's dad was a journalist and she did art history at uni and her brother did law but no-one ever thinks they're middle-class - they're just working class because they speak with accents.
My dad dragged me to a Bruce Springsteen concert as a kid. It was my first concert but I fell asleep in the middle. My second concert was Weezer on the 'Pinkerton' tour and 'Pinkerton' is the reason why I'm doing this.
My parents were kind of over protective people. Me and my sister had to play in the backyard all the time. They bought us bikes for Christmas but wouldn't let us ride in the street we had to ride in the backyard. Another Christmas my dad got me a basketball hoop and put it in the middle of the lawn! You can't dribble on grass.
Barack Obama knows that to create an economy built to last we need to focus on middle-class families. Families who stay up on Sunday nights pacing the floor like my dad did while their children tucked in bed dream big dreams. Families who aren't sure what Monday morning will bring but who believe our nation's best days are still ahead.
What is a normal childhood? We weren't rich we were pretty middle-class. My dad survived from job to job with him taking care of so many relatives he couldn't save any money.