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Great teachers should be rewarded.

Teachers have the hardest and most important jobs in America. They're building our nation. And we should appreciate them, respect them, and pay them well.

Teaching is a truly noble profession. It's sad the amount of responsibility that teachers have today. They're not only teaching kids: they're raising kids, policing kids - and they don't make a lot of money.

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.

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

We're not trying to be the only route into teaching. We do put enormous energy into understanding what differentiates the most successful teachers.

Teach For America provides one of the most critical pipelines for bringing new talent into public education.

Teaching is a profession in which capacity building should occur at every stage of the career - novices working with accomplished colleagues, skillful teachers sharing their craft, and opportunities for teacher leadership.

Teachers make a difference, and we would serve our students better by focusing on attracting and retaining the quality teachers by raising teacher pay.

I want to attract the best people into teaching.