they don't get why you chose this profession. i'm not even sure, i won't say that. they don't get it. and look, folks, they either directly call you and i'm not quoting governor romney now, but your critics either directly call you or imply that you're selfish, that all this is about is an easy ride. all this is about is you, as if you're not part of the community, as if you decided to teach for fame and fortune that you get from teaching. ladies and gentlemen, when a parent isn't there to pick his or her child up after school, because their car broke down or some other reason, and you have a doctor's appointment, what do you do?

you call the doctor and say i can't be there, i'm staying with this child until they're safe. it's you who gets your neighbor to watch your own child at home so you can stay with the child in class who is having trouble passing that english class, and you know they won't make it if they don't pass. it's you, and i've watched this. it's you who leaves the dinner table early to go to a home visit, to emphasize to a mother who's under great stress raising her kids by herself that there's ways she can get help. it's you, it's you who does that. and there's so many stories i could tell. i'll give you one. i was up in york, pennsylvania. where's pennsylvania?

i was up in york, the teachers here from york can tell you, their school district was flat stripped of money. the reason is this godawful recession they inherited and the nature of the change of the city of york. more poor than it ever had before. they have a contract that allowed them to get a pay increase, but the teachers and all the school personnel got together, gave up that next year's raise in order to keep kindergarten going in york, pennsylvania. [ applause ] by the way, by the way, i'm

confident and i apologize for not mentioning the hundred other yorks out there, for not mentioning what you guys have given up in the midst of this recession. ladies and gentlemen, you're the same people who coach your team all week at school and then go volunteer on the little league field on the weekend. you're the same people who organize the fund-raiser for the family whose house burned down and they lost everything in the house because they didn't have homeowners insurance. you're the people in the community that people turn to. you're the people who organize the bake sale at your church to raise money for summer camp. you're the same ones who go out and buy school supplies in some of your districts out of your

own pocket because your kids can't afford them. governor romney and this new republican party, instead of focusing on the things that can actually help you do your job better, like making sure you have modern labs for chem and science, using equipment that these kids will have to use when they get to college or go out and in the workplace, making sure that the kids have access to computers because it is the new tablet of the generation, you cannot engage unless you are proficient in that technology. instead of going out and doing that, or giving you the flexibility you need to teach with creativity and passion, so you're not just teaching to a test, giving you a seat at the table when we talk about how to improve education in this

country. instead of those things, instead of those things, what are they doing. critics are going to say i'm being harsh. i'll acknowledge there are notable exceptions but there's a pretty uniform view held by mr. romney and the republicans in the united states congress today. they criticize you and they blame you. they make you the fall guy. they should be thinking of ways to help you make your job easier, not more difficult. instead, they hector, they lecture and they blame you and they call you selfish. let me tell you, let me just say this. they have a different value set than we do. my dad used to say don't tell me what you value, show me your budget and i will tell you what you value. show me where you spend the

money and i'll tell you what is most important. let's take a look at governor romney and the republicans in congress. they have shown us their budget. they have voted on the budget they believe should be the budget of the united states. just with education, they cut $4.9 billion out of elementary and secondary education, which may result in as many as 38,000 more teachers and aides losing their jobs. yet they continue to insist on a $4 billion tax cut for oil companies to encourage them to go out and drill for oil. tell me, which is in the greater interest of america? they cut head start by as many as 200,000 kids losing access to

quality education because we've increased the standards for head start. all the studies show early education is absolutely critical in dealing with this gap. they cut pell grants, as many as nine million students will lose money. they deny work study jobs to more than 125,000 students who need the help to stay in college. they refuse, they refuse to help the states put back to work over 300,000 educators as we did the first two years, so you don't end up shorthanded, short-shifted and kids not getting what they need. governor romney eliminates the $2500 tax cut that helped middle

class families struggle to keep their kids in school. why did they do this? they do this, do they think it improves education? do they think it improves our ability to compete in the world? do they think this will better position us to lead the world economy in the 21st century? i don't think so. i think they do this because they want to make sure they have room for an additional $2 trillion tax cut for millionaires and an $800 billion continuation of the bush tax cuts for the top. i know you think i'm making that up. romney has proposed in addition to keeping the $800 billion for those in the top percentile, he proposes a new tax of $2 trillion going only to people who make a minimum of $1 million

a year. like i said, folks, this ain't your father's republican party. these guys have a different view of how to move america forward. the point is they have a fundamentally different value set than we do. just listen to governor romney and some of his republican friends. listen to some of the things they say. one republican congressman said and i quote, the government needs to get its nose out of the education business. he compared student loans to quote, stage three cancer of socialism. i'm not making this up. governor romney said quote, i'm not pleased with what i read about a plan to save 240,000 teachers' jobs. he's not pleased? give me a break. he's not pleased. with putting 240,000 teachers back in the classroom.

in philadelphia, on his magical mystical tour, he told a group of teachers that class size doesn't matter, prompting one of the people at his little meeting, a teacher, to say quote, you know, i can't think of any teacher in the whole time i've been teaching, over ten years, who would say more students would benefit them. i can't think of any parent, quote, i can't think of a parent that would say i'd like my teacher to be in a room with lots of kids and only one teacher. end of quote. when he was out speaking at a college in the midwest, the governor said not long ago that these students had to be willing to take a chance. how? go home and borrow money if you

have it from your parents -- if you have to from your parents. how many of you know can go home and borrow money to start a new business from your parents? and he says the president's out of touch? how many of you all have a swiss bank account? by the way, parenthetically, you ever think you would be choosing between two guys for president, one with a swiss bank account, one without? it's kind of -- look, if you really want to know what he thinks about the profession, if you really want to know how fundamentally out of touch he is with what made you choose your

profession in the first place, go to his website. here's what he says about you, and i'm quoting. i'm quoting now. when your cause in life, referring to you all, when your cause in life is preventing parents from having a meaningful choice or children from having a real chance, then you're on the wrong side, end of quote. that's what he thinks of you. pretty astounding. your cause in life is preventing parents from seeing their kids have an opportunity and a choice? your cause in life is preventing children from having a real chance? is he serious? he is, though. he is. i believe he believes what he says.

that's why i believe they mean what they say about their budget. i've been doing this for awhile. i can't think of a candidate for president who has ever made such a direct assault on such an honorable profession. how many of your colleagues, like i said, look, guys, you know me. i say what i think and sometimes you don't like it. there's some lousy teachers. and you know it as well as i do. just like there's some lousy businessmen, lousy bankers, lousy -- but ladies and gentlemen, how many of your colleagues do you know who entered the profession of teaching for any other reason other than expanding choice, meaningful choice, for the american kids? how many of you would trade a 5% bump in your salary for those

kids who come up and look at you and say mrs. jones, you changed my life. how many of you, how many of you know anything that pleases a teacher more than knowing, knowing that they helped a kid with either an academic or deep personal problem and knowing, knowing that you saved them. because, ladies and gentlemen, because if the next generation is well educated, they're going to have more freedom to choose how they live their lives. they're going to have a fighting chance to avoid some of the incredible difficult choices people have to make. six out of ten students, six out of ten jobs in the next decade

are going to require some certificate or degree after high school, just to be able to compete. look, it's all about choices. it's all about opportunity. it's all about community. it's about america. it's about making america once again the strongest economy in the world. i know and you know that jill is right when she says any country that outcompetes us, excuse me, outeducates us will outcompete us. that's just a naked fact of life. the days are gone, the days are gone and it's good for the world, the days are gone when we were the only country who had universal education for over 100 years. everybody else is getting in the game, as they should. it's good for them, it's good for humanity, it's good for their country, it's good for competition and it's good for us. folks, isn't what it comes down

to creating an economy where everyone has a chance, where the poor have a way up, where the middle class can live with security and dream that their children can even do more and where those who take great risk and have great imagination can reap even greater rewards? that's what i thought the system was about. we have a fundamentally different view as to how to accomplish that than governor romney and his friends do. he believes that the system continues to reward those at the very top, make sure that those at the very top have the greatest opportunities, that somehow that those so-called job creators will make everything okay for the rest of us. that everyone else will do just fine. it's from the top down. he believes it. he truly believes it. but we believe that the way to build this country is the way we always have, from the middle out. that's how it's always been done. the way to do that is invest in

the things that have always made our economy grow, innovation, research, development, infrastructure, and education, and education. ladies and gentlemen -- and have a tax system where everybody, everybody pays their fair share. [ applause ] ladies and gentlemen, my republican friends disagree when i say that is wealth envy. wealth envy. ladies and gentlemen, think about this. in the jobs bill we had, we broke it out in constituent pieces, there was a part that would put 400,000 teachers, teachers' aides, cops and firefighters back to work and the way we paid for that is we said we'll pay five-tenths of 1% on the first dollar you make after your first million.

according to the polling data, even the millionaires thought that was fair. millionaires are just as patriotic as poor people. the very wealthy are just as noble and patriotic as the middle class. but nothing has been asked of them in this horrendous recession. and it's time we just ask. [ applause ] let me conclude by saying that when i talk about the middle class, a lot of the economists -- not a lot, some of the economists and some of my friends on the other side talk about it like it's a number, the debate whether there's 52,600 or whatever. to me, the middle class is a lot more than a number. it's a way of life. it's a value set. it's about being able to own your own home and not just rent it. it's about being able to live in a safe neighborhood where your

kid can walk to a park and know they're going to be okay. it's about being able to attend a modern school that's well equipped and fully staffed, where if they do their part, the parents and the child, they can qualify to go on to school after high school, if they choose to do it. and it's about, it's about being able to have the certainty that if your child is eligible, they will be able to get to college, that the answer to college should not be your income level. it should be your intellectual capacity. [ applause ] do you know anyone, do you know anyone, rich or poor, middle class, that doesn't aspire for their child to have a college education?

one part of being middle class is being able to help your elderly parents and to save enough money on your own so you won't have to look to your children for help. ladies and one more thing. to be able to dream about the possibility that your child will do even better than you did. the neighborhood i was raised in were not poor. they were typical middle class neighborhoods. i spent the bulk of my life after moving from scranton and wilmington and lived in a suburb and all but three years i can think of when my grand mom died and my grandpa moved in when he had a stroke. my uncle, et cetera. normal. normal. but you know what? the way some of these guys talk

about us, they think that somehow we come from that circumstance, our parents and we don't dream that our kids can be millionaires and that our kids can have a fortune 500 company and that our son or daughter can be president or vice president of the united states. my mother never had a doubt that i could be vice president or president of the united states. my mother and father never had a doubt that my brother, jimmy, could be a successful businessman. they never had a doubt that my sister, valerie, could do whatever she wanted. that's what being middle class is. and no one, no group of people make it more probable or possible for someone to achieve and attain than educators in the united states of america.

[ applause ] you're the one. you're the one to equip the next generation. you're the ones that give them hope. you're the ones that give them wings. you're the ones who inspire them like somebody inspired you when you were in high school, when you were in college. none of us would be here. jill nor michelle nor barack would be in the position we are if it were not for teachers and a help to get to school and someone caring about us. ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, you know, one of my favorite poets is william butler yates. here's what he said about education. he said education does not fill a pail, it's lighting a fire. it is not filling the pail, it's

lighting the fire. and you can see it when that flame goes off in that student's eyes. you can see it and feel it. it's kind of like electricity and it's the thing that makes you do what you do and thing that makes everything you do worthwhile. it doesn't always happen but when it happens, when it happens, there's no feeling like it. that's why you're educators. that's why you do what you do. that's why you're so important. it's time to light a fire. light a fire under these guys and tell them we will not settle in education. we will not tradeoffucprioritie. we will be the best educated nation in the world. god bless you all and may god protect our troops. thank you. [ applause ]

[ applause ] wrapping up remarks from vice president joe biden and his wife, jill, at the national

education association's six-day annual meeting here in washington. yesterday nea president dennis van roekel spoke at this conference. his remarks last about 20 minutes. >> see to me the purpose of public education begins with access and equity. that's why it's public. that's why we need it for all. public education makes america strong studying history and civics and help students become good citizens. part of a democratic republic. public education is the vehicle to teach american values and ideals. values like a just society, equal opportunity, and democracy. and in a nation where equal opportunity is one of our most

deeply held values, education is a key that opens the door to economic opportunity for people from all backgrounds. see that's why leaders from thomas jefferson to martin luther king, jr., to president obama have understood the importance of education in our society. another obvious answer to the why question is student learning. the academic side of education. not a curriculum narrowed to meet a test but a curriculum that includes drama, sports, science, a whole universe to inspire our students. education should prepare young people for the future to help them discover their passion.

but there's more to the why. there's more to education than academics. so when we talk about the why of public education, the purpose of public education, we have to address the needs of the whole child. the needs including issues like health care, good nutrition, safe school and family environment. all of these things impact learning and student development. we aren't only their teacher or their bus driver. we are an adult in that child's life. we never know when we might have an impact on their development or their growth as a person so we have to see them as more than a student at a desk. one year i asked all of my high school math students to each

write me a letter and their goals for my class. their aspirations. i said please tell me one thing i don't know about you but you think i should. that night as i was reading 160 letters written just for me one of them jumped out and grabbed me. i remember where she sat. she was not doing particularly well. we were about six weeks into the school year. but in her letter she said one thing, mr. van roekel doesn't know about me is that my dad died two weeks before school started. i know school is important. it's just hard to feel that right now. so you realize at times like that academics are important, sure, but that's not all a student needs. you see, sometimes kids just need somebody to listen, to