Progress for black Americans depends on good schools because education is the last great equalizer.

And my career the things that have happened have happened because of my music education background.

Session musicians kind of respected me because what I was talking about made sense. That all came from an education. Believe me education does you more good. Maybe that's the reason I've been around so long.

I'm a huge fan of music in schools and music education because that's how I grew up.

I stupidly ignored education completely. I found it dull and I preferred to cause chaos and have fun. I regret this massively now.

And I thought that was the best way for me to participate because standing in the crowd and listening is a fantastic education but it's not my nature. I need to be involved. So I did that instead.

Poverty does not cause violence and terrorism. Lack of education does not cause terrorism.

You see some non-Catholic friends of mine have questioned the depth of my faith because of the fact that I have a good education.

Many seventh graders I know in Illinois as well as around the Nation are studying the Constitution. I was pretty impressed with the quality of education our children are receiving because they had not expected me to ask them about it.

Education technology is very important because we have a massive challenge in public schools.

I realized that I would have some very tough sledding and I was very discouraged because I didn't see much hope of getting into the field I wanted to get into with no college education.

Because if you don't have a great workforce a great higher education system you're not going to have the next eBay the next AmGen the next you know Miasole and not only California but America is going to fall behind a whole new competitive context which is obviously China India and other countries.

Unfortunately the real achievements of children on the ground became debased and devalued because Labor education secretaries sounded like Soviet commissars praising the tractor production figures when we know that those exams were not the rock-solid measures of achievement that children deserve.

What we're doing now is we're saying that individual schools can spend the money on their own priorities so that head teachers can decide what's truly important because the big shift in approach on education that we're taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.

The first big break was winning a scholarship to go to Cambridge University. I was very lucky because my parents couldn't have afforded a university education for me. Without a scholarship I couldn't possibly have gone.

I hope to focus on what I'm passionate about because I think I'd do them best job on them - education urban education women and children's issues and literacy.

When women earn the money for the family everyone in the family benefits. We also know that when women have an income everyone wins because women dedicate 90% of the income to health education to food security to the children to the family or to the community so when women have an income everybody wins.