Education

By Stacey Lawson

Investing in Education: It's Worth Fighting For

That's why Stacey has worked so hard to help deliver the promise of education to others. Stacey co-founded and teaches at the University of California's Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at Berkeley. The center helps equip engineers and scientists with the skills to lead, innovate and commercialize technology and cleantech projects including wind, solar, electric vehicle, green home services and other job-creating innovations.

As an educator, Stacey knows that America's commitment to quality education must start with our young children + studies show that children who go to excellent pre-K programs have a higher lifetime earning potential than those who do not. Stacey will fight to make sure quality early education is a part of our long-term economic policy.

She supports fully funding early childhood and K-12 education to close the achievement gap for English learners and ensure our kids are college ready. And Stacey will push for a special emphasis on math and science, where California has the second lowest spending per pupil. This is an area that has been cut widely throughout the 2nd Congressional district, and we are falling behind in creating a trained workforce for technology and green jobs of our future.

Stacey will go to Congress with a deep commitment to not only expand access to quality higher education, but also to help address the drop-out rate in colleges and community colleges in California. She will fight to restore funding to improve our public schools so students arrive prepared at our colleges and community colleges. And she will fight to increase funding for public colleges and universities and financial aid for higher education + including investing more in the Pell Grant program + so students can spend more time succeeding and less time working to pay tuition and fees.

Particularly here in California, higher education funding has taken a back seat. Tuition hikes and layoffs have damaged two of our best economic assets: the best public university systems in the world and a 21st century workforce. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, our state will graduate one million fewer Californians than are needed to meet workforce demands.

That's just one of the reasons that Stacey Lawson will fight to increase our investment in education + and therefore our investment in a healthy economy and a healthier future.