They basically said that if I didn't show up for school they'd mark me present they wouldn't send the truant officer after me. At 16 I enrolled in something called continuing education. Once a month I'd go out to Jamaica but I didn't take it seriously.

After completing a Delaware State education they were afforded opportunities beyond anything they might have imagined - and they opened doors for themselves that surely would have remained closed if they only had a high school education.

My mother was born on a tiny farm in County Mayo. She was meant to stay at home and look after the farm while her brother and sister got an education. However she came to England on a visit and never went back.

During the decades after Brown v. Board of Education there was terrific progress. Tens of thousands of public schools were integrated racially. During that time the gap between black and white achievement narrowed.

Abraham Lincoln comes from nothing has no education no money lives in the middle of nowhere on the frontier. And despite the fact that he suffers one tragedy and one setback after another through sheer force of will he becomes something extraordinary: not only the president but the person who almost single-handedly united the country.

President Obama believes in a country where we invest in education in roads and bridges in science and in the future so we can create new opportunities so the next kid can make it big and the kid afer that and the kid after that that's what President Obama believes.

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

After all those days in the cotton fields the dreams came true on a gold record on a piece of wood. It's in my den where I can look at it every day. I wear it out lookin' at it.

My mom taught me to go after my dreams. I have this faith in myself that I must have gotten from her.

I appreciate everything that has been done for me. After a difficult start I've just followed my dreams.