Proposals to expand Early Head Start make sense. Will they become a reality? It all comes down to that first lesson: that every baby matters. The next few months will demonstrate how well we adults remember that.

Amid the euphoria of record levels for the Dow or the S&P 500, Wall Street and Main Street.That's certainly true, but my visit to Chaparral High School reminded me that for some kids, even Main Street looks like a dream destination -- and they don't have the bus fare to get there.

Children in poverty often come from less-educated and involved parents, lack supervision, don't have equal learning experiences to their more affluent counterparts, and are more likely to drop out of high school or land in prison.

We have to do more than tread water. The sense of urgency is great. A new wave of civic engagement in communities of color is necessary to move this agenda forward. It is the only way that opportunity for all will be attainable.

At it now stands, School Turnaround AmeriCorps is a grand experiment that inadvertently treats both students and volunteers as guinea pigs. Is it morally acceptable to risk their future on a theoretical framework when we already have effective interventions backed by strong evaluations?

Getting communities more involved with their public schools can lead to strange bedfellows, like the group of motorcyclists that descended upon Littleton Elementary School in Lee County, Fla., this past holiday season.

Austin, Texas, likes to cultivate a reputation for weirdness, but there are some pretty wonderful things going on in the Austin Independent School District. Throughout the city, students are learning about persistence, empathy and honesty right alongside math, science and history.

I used to play "school" when I was a kid. I would teach my imaginary class the intricacies of building an effective Lego compound, and then give a quiz. What was on this quiz?

If you cannot eat, you cannot learn. If you are homeless, you have no safe retreat for doing your homework. If cannot find affordable daycare for your children, you cannot fully focus on your training, work, or education.

As we've graduated into a global, knowledge based economy, human capital has become our most important resource. Unfortunately, the current education and workforce development systems serve only a small minority of Americans well.