Milken Wrap-up

I'm back from the Milken event in Los Angeles and with over 3,000 attendees from around the country, the event was a good place to discover and discuss the latest innovations and thoughts on topics such as health, education, and the economy. I mentioned earlier in the week that I sat on a panel at the event with 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics winner Gary Becker, Eli Broad, Michael Morris and Lowell Milken.

We had a thought-provoking discussion that focused on America's education system compared to the rest of the world. We also discussed critical solutions for getting our country back on track and fixing our schools. KTLA covered parts of the panel discussion, which you can watch in the clip below.

As I've mentioned before, I strongly believe that we are losing the education race worldwide. As recently as 1998, the U.S. ranked first in percentage of 25-34 year olds with at least a bachelor's degree, but by 2005 it had dropped to 7th.  Between 2000 and 2005, out of 23 countries, the U.S. was the only country that showed no increase in its postsecondary graduation rate.  And while America once had the best high school graduation rate in the world, it has now slipped to 20th out of 26 countries.

Fixing our mediocre education system is something that we must do and as I witnessed from the event – there's great interest to do so. I can only hope that the candidates will continue to offer their plans for true education reform – our students and our country deserve that.