I knew that Americans get irony
when I came across that legislation No Child Left Behind.
Because whoever thought of that title gets irony,
don't they, because --
(Laughter) (Applause) —
because it's leaving millions of children behind.
Now I can see that's not a very attractive name for legislation:
Millions of Children Left Behind. I can see that.
What's the plan? Well, we propose
to leave millions of children behind,
and here's how it's going to work.
2:04
And it's working beautifully.
In some parts of the country,
60 percent of kids drop out of high school.
In the Native American communities,
it's 80 percent of kids.
If we halved that number, one estimate is
it would create a net gain to the U.S. economy
over 10 years of nearly a trillion dollars.
From an economic point of view,
this is good math, isn't it, that we should do this?
It actually costs an enormous amount
to mop up the damage from the dropout crisis.