During my eleven years as a New York City public school teacher, I saw firsthand the impact that poverty has on the classroom. In low-income neighborhoods like Sunset Park, where I taught, students as young as five years old enter school affected by the stresses often created by poverty: domestic violence, drug abuse, gang activity.

It's an intolerable abuse of power to have employees who are supposed to be advancing the public interest actually working on political campaigns.

Even the best parents have to spend so much time making ends meet that they cannot help their kids with homework or afford the extra tutoring that wealthier students enjoy. To address these unjust disparities, we need an early education revolution.

I can't solve the poverty problem, but there are things you can do to mitigate its effects on kids.

I want kids to be able to escape failing schools that trap them. And it's an unequal trapping of children. The most affluent find a way to escape. They move to a great suburban district or send their kid to a private school. The people who are trapped in the worst schools that have been terrible often for half a century? Those are the poorest kids.

I have a bunch of brothers. I grew up with a big family.

My great grandfather was the last practicing Jew in my family. He died in 1982.

Family transcends the flesh. You don't love someone because they look like you, you love their spirit; it's the soul connection.