Mark Shriver

Our nation's economic future is uncertain; we face increasingly aggressive global competition; lagging academic achievement is dragging down economic output; and almost two-thirds of Americans think our nation is on the wrong track.

We know the bad news all too well. The good news is...

For many of us, the arrival of spring means a new baseball season, taking short-sleeve shirts out of storage, a spring break trip, and studying for final exams. And for Randy, of course, it means the American Idol finals.

Not all Americans see as much change in their lives when...

Earlier this month, The Huffington Post partnered with Save the Children's U.S. Programs for an amazing series of blog posts about the nearly 1 in 4 kids living in poverty in the United States today.

Artists like Julianne Moore, Jennifer Garner,

The New York Times on Friday led with a story about a new Stanford University study that found the education gap between kids from wealthier families and ones struggling with poverty widened to a giant chasm over the last generation.

Specifically, since 1940, the...

This post is part of a series on childhood poverty in the United States in partnership with Save the Children and Julianne Moore.  Moore leads the organization's Valentine's Day campaign, through which cards are sold to support the fight against poverty in the U.S. To learn more or to purchase the...

At a campaign stop in Iowa Thursday, former speaker Newt Gingrich, making an argument against century-old child labor laws, said: "Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works ... [s]o they literally have no habit of...

This is my first Thanksgiving without my dad.

Not a day goes by that I don't miss him greatly, but not a day goes by that I don't thank God for blessing me with such a role model.

When I announced this spring that...

The Census Bureau is set to roll out a new way of measuring poverty in the United States, according to a front-page story in today's New York Times. Instead of counting how many families are living below the federal poverty line, the Bureau will now also take into...

Since its inception in 2001, No Child Left Behind, the centerpiece federal education law, has injected long-needed accountability into our education system and invested in kids and schools that weren't meeting standards. As a result, over the last decade, the bi-partisan law helped millions of kids who, otherwise,...

NBC News' Education Nation campaign launched this week with teachers, business pioneers, a former president and other leaders gathered in New York City to engage in a dialogue about education in America today. The event spans all of NBC's news programming and also convenes a three-day Summit on...

The number of Americans living in poverty jumped to a historic high this year according to new data released today by the Census Bureau.  Bearing the brunt of this crisis are 16 million kids in America, almost one out of every four and the highest number of kids since...

The eyes of the nation will peer solemnly across Lower Manhattan, rural Pennsylvania and Northern Virginia on Sunday. While millions of Americans will remember and reflect, many will also look beyond 9/11 to contemplate the decade that followed.

Indeed, 9/11 was not only a singular horrific event, but it...

In a matter of weeks, the Congressional Deficit Super Committee will convene to consider some of the most dramatic spending cuts in our nation's history.

The battle lines, political maneuvering and cast of characters will be predictable. Seniors groups, defense contractors, corporations and state and local governments will line up...

Anyone who remembers the effort to reclassify ketchup as a vegetable, Barbara Bush telling Katrina survivors that they were better off in the Superdome or Wall Street executives crying poverty at $500,000 salaries, won't be surprised to learn the latest "Let Them Eat Cake"...

The conversation about education reform in America often takes place in the realm of 4th-grade reading aptitude, middle school math and science achievement and SAT scores. Last week, on Capitol Hill, we expanded the conversation to the place where all of a child's potential hinges: the first five years.

The...

The seemingly permanent budget wars have been churning along all spring, with Republicans pulling and Democrats pushing, and with what seems like not enough getting done for the American people. However, just before official Washington raced home for the Memorial Day weekend, something really fabulous got done for America's youngest.

Tornadoes of historic proportions are turning towns across the Southeast into trash heaps. Families are homeless, hundreds of people are dead, kids and families are crowded in shelters and the devastation will scar the region for years.

Americans are watching in horror and, in a sign of the times,...

In a strange turn of events, a mind-numbing humanitarian crisis caused by this month's massive 9.0 earthquake, an enormous tsunami and hundreds of aftershocks has been nearly overshadowed by a growing crisis from damaged nuclear power plants along Japan's northeast coast.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of survivors -- men, women...

When we think of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the words "mushy," "maternal," or "big spender" usually don't come to mind. That's why it was downright amazing this week when Bernanke waded into an education issue that too often gets mischaracterized as an agenda item of the "mushy, maternal big...

The images from New Zealand this week shocked the world, as we witnessed extraordinary devastation to that nation's second largest city. As much as we are focused on the relief and recovery efforts, this event is also a reminder of the need for better protections from catastrophes like the one...