Why do kids have to go to school at the same time every day?
Why do they have to leave school at the same time every day? 
Why do they have to sit in a classroom in rows
and 45 minutes having exact same homework and exact same lesson as 29 other kids?
*music playing*
We don't,
if we're willing to make a commitment to personalizing that journey for every child.
With each passing generation, the challenge for school to overcome the effects of poverty on learning become greater.
Charlotte, for instance, leads a nation, born in poverty, stay in poverty.
The rate of people born in poverty and stay in
poverty entire life.
That number, that percent, continues to grow with every generation, that if you're born in poverty,
you stay in poverty your entire life.
Far too many people associate
poverty with race.
They see...
poverty is only something that is significantly found
in certain racial communities,
African American, Latino.
When we go and talk in a state like North Dakota,
poverty there isn't about race;
poverty is about poverty, and they have the same fundamental challenges
that we see everyplace else in this country.
It's not about culture, it's about poverty.
As I spoke to a parent in Charlotte who said,
"It's wonderful that my son has a tablet
and that he uses it at school, but when he
comes home,
I don't have Wi-Fi.
I don't have internet access,
so he can't use his tablet at home to do his homework."
*music plays*
And a lot of us don't think of that, we think of it as part of our everyday life
that you have cable TV, you have Wi-Fi, you have a smart phone, it's in every home.
Well that's not true.
So it's a poverty issue, it's not a cultural issue,
and we have to stop associating poverty with race and understand poverty as a condition in this country
that is eroding the infrastructure.
It doesn't take too long
before you realize,
we start to border on a lot of those countries where we see two societies,
a very narrow haves
and a very significant have-nots,
and that's not America.
America was built on the promise that everybody had opportunity.
That's not a country that gives everybody opportunity.
*music plays*
