As we strip teachers of pay, benefits, and prestige, we'll lose more and more talent to investment banking.

A new report came out recently on what the US can learn from the countries that most successfully educate their children. The most important recommendation? "Make a concerted effort to raise the status of the teaching profession." While the U.S. is only second to Luxembourg in OECD countries' spending on education, our money is misdirected, going to areas other than teacher salaries like bus transportation and sports facilities. And as the NYTimes notes, the results are clear:

On average, American teenagers came in 15th in reading and 19th in science. American students placed 27th in math. Only 2 percent of American students scored at the highest proficiency level, compared with 8 percent in Korea and 5 percent in Finland.

This recommendation comes at a time when the teaching profession is experiencing a brutal attack, as Republican governors (see: Scott Walker; also: Chris Christie) demonize them and their unions as vampires sucking state coffers dry and lazy ne'er-do-wells who have luxurious pensions and vacation time. But the degradation of the teaching profession isn't a new phenomenon.

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When I was graduating college not too long ago, I had my heart set on teaching. I loved working with children and I wanted to give something back to my community and feel I was making a difference. What better way than to educate the next generation? But I entered the profession against all advice to the contrary (except from my mother and grandmother, both educators) and with zero help from my college's career services department. In fact, the only career that department seemed to want to service me into was investment banking. Every time I visited to go over my resume or practice interview skills, I had to answer again why I wasn't interested in being an ibanker. And I struggled to justify to myself entering a profession that promised to pay me so little, with the price tag of my student loans looming over me, when I could have gone into one that would have enabled me to pay back my loans in a heartbeat. In the end I persevered, but many of my friends and classmates did not. And who could blame them? With tens of thousands of dollars (or even hundreds of thousands) in student loan debt, the economically smart decision was to head into high-paying professions.

And in fact, they're not alone. A 2007 study by Jesse Rothstein and Cecilia Elena Rouse found that each $10,000 in loan debt reduces the likelihood that a student will take a job in the nonprofit, governmental, or education sectors by about 5-6 percentage points. This effect is heaviest in the education sector: that $10,000 in debt reduces the probability of taking a job in that sector by 3.3%. The authors came to this conclusion: "It appears that college debt affects post-graduation employment decisions: students with more debt are less likely to accept jobs in low-paying industries and accept higher-paying jobs more generally."

President Obama encouraged young people to go into teaching in his State of the Union, but simply imploring students isn't going to do the trick. It's not just about raising pay, either; it's about raising the public's perception of a teacher's job. While some point to summers off and short hours as signs that it's a cushy profession, the reality is quite different. Andreas Schleicher, who prepared the report, says, "The fact is that successful, dedicated teachers in the U.S. work long hours for little pay and, in many cases, insufficient support from their leadership." I can attest to this from personal experience. I was in the classroom well before 8am every day and stayed after 6pm on plenty of occasions -- not to mention the work I did on the weekends to make sure my lessons would run smoothly and engage my students. And I was far from the hardest worker among my colleagues. Not to mention that I worked at a private school that had excellent support, while many public schools have leadership that is stretched too thin and little budget for professional development.

The most important answer to fixing our educational system, which isn't serving our children, is to bring in more quality teachers. But if we continue to strip them of benefits and dignity, there's fact chance of it.

Bryce Covert is Assistant Editor at New Deal 2.0.

Teachers certainly are greedy, aren't they? They make $50,000 a year with medical and dental benefits (outrageous!), have summers off, and live off of taxpayer money like vampires who love multi-colored construction paper. They could really learn a thing or two from Wall Street -- so it's a good thing Jon Stewart is here to explain it to them:

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Let's recap: getting $50k a year borders on avarice, but $250k is "close to poverty." Teachers take the summer off, but while bankers made shadowy deals that brought down the global economy they showed up year round. Teachers are paid with tax dollars, unlike those Wall Street firms who got bailed out. And if we cut Wall Street compensation, we'll break contracts and have a huge exodus of talent. We can't afford that, since they did such a good job of not wrecking the economy last time. The same can't possibly be true of teaching, right?

Hats off, Jon Stewart. You nailed it.

If we want more teachers and public service, we have to keep funding the programs that make it possible.

In a recent bid to slash spending, Congress looks ready to nix seemingly dispensable programs like AmeriCorps. Under that larger umbrella, organizations like Teach For America are able to offer Corps members loan deferrals and loan forgiveness, making the opportunity to serve easier for recent college graduates. Without AmeriCorps funding, the extra financial burden on potential members will deter many from joining its programs. Although the President urges us to serve, the opportunity to do so will be undermined indefinitely.

I am Raul Mendoza, and I am a fourth grade math and computer science teacher in New Orleans, Louisiana. I am serving the first of my two-year commitment with Teach for America. I've been teaching since July 2010 and can tell you that it is an indispensable public service for the communities we serve. We give confidence to youth who live in chronic poverty -- youth who, in many cases, have seen first-hand crime that tears apart their communities. We give students the motivation and stability to be in school and stay in school. We give these students a choice about what they want to do with their lives -- not what they have to do because of the lack of opportunity they face.

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This past summer, I taught 5th grade students in Atlanta who failed both math and English on their last state-wide tests. Over the summer, our students scored an average of 25% better on their exit exams than they did on their entry exams. Those scholars built the foundations they needed to move on to the sixth grade. At my current assignment, a Teach For America teacher is running a program to train our eighth graders to apply to top high schools in New Orleans. I am heavily invested in this program. We've already had three students accepted into Benjamin Franklin High School -- the best in Louisiana and one of the top public high schools nationally. We will continue to prepare our students for success. This step in their development is where the game changes. Accessing high quality higher education helps America's next generation gain their confidence, knowledge, and the opportunities they need to succeed.

Only a few weeks ago in his State of the Union address, President Obama called forward the nation's young people to "make a difference in the life of a child" and become teachers. We are "nation builders," President Obama elaborated. Our aspiration is to develop a well-educated, engaged generation. To do that, we need to provide young people the opportunity to serve their communities. AmeriCorps makes that happen. Cutting an entire program just to pay lip service to budgetary restraint will severely undermine the foundation of civic engagement. Whether the choice is to join the Marine Corps or the AmeriCorps, the President and Congress must not deter America's youth from serving their country.

In the fifty years since John F. Kennedy's inaugural, it is hard to fathom that we have fallen from asking not what our country can do for us, but what we can do for our country to a Congress that actively seeks to limit our civic engagement.

Raul Mendoza is a fourth grade math and computer teacher working in New Orleans, Louisiana through the Teach For America program and was previously the Co-President of the Columbia University chapter of the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network. The views expressed are his own.

Young people are taking matters into their own hands and working to effect change across a number of issues.

This past Sunday would have been Franklin D. Roosevelt's 129th birthday. During this jobless recovery, we should remember that, beyond simply being the 32nd President of the United States, FDR was a fearless leader who redefined the role of government during our country's darkest hour. How? Roosevelt used an active government to create jobs, provide relief to disadvantaged citizens, build our country's infrastructure, win World War II, and, more broadly, address the needs of the American people. He advanced a values-laden, progressive vision for the everyday American.

Thousands of young people across the country are carrying on his legacy by putting forth their own progressive vision. The Roosevelt Institute Campus Network is releasing a New Deal for the Millennial America -- a blueprint for the progressive future that we, young people born between 1980 and 2000, are determined to inherit. Each generation designs its own path, and each American generation redefines the American dream. With the launch of the Campus Network's Blueprint for the Millennial America, the Millennial Generation is declaring their vision for America's future and imploring our leaders to take note, grab a shovel, and start building it with us.

So what will 2040 look if we have our way?
Over the past year, the Campus Network convened thousands of students from across the country in Think2040 conversations, asking them to define their vision, values, and priorities for our shared future. The results were compiled in our Blueprint for Millennial America. The report details how we plan to change the system from inside, employ ourselves, think long-term, and create a more equal, accessible, empowered, and community-minded 2040 America. Want specifics? In the Millennial America, our priorities are:

1. Educational Attainment

Our generation sees educational attainment as the key to opportunity and abundance. And we recognize that to remain competitive in the Next American Economy we will have to out-educate the rest of the world. Providing equal access to quality education is also a pathway to closing our country's growing wealth disparity. We need to improve K-12 education and increase college access and affordability to do that.

The best part? Millennials have already started moving toward this goal. Innovative young people, like Roosevelt Campus Network alum Kirsten Hill, have envisioned and implemented student-generated education programs like the SILA project. SILA (Students Improving Literacy Abound) is a university-partnered reading program in New Orleans that has paired over 100 Tulane students acting as mentors with second and third graders to decrease the achievement gap and increase literacy rates.

2. Green Living, Working, and Innovating

We recognize that to build a green economy, our generation will have to win the energy race with an effort that mirrors the Apollo program of the 1960s. The cost of fossil fuels is going to increase as countries like China and India compete for limited resources. We need to be innovation hawks and invest in green technology and infrastructure now to ensure that the windmills, solar panels, and fuel cells we use tomorrow are manufactured in the United States.

We need to cultivate healthier food systems. By supporting urban agriculture and other alternatives we can secure access to fresh and healthy food for all Americans. This will increase the security of our communities by ensuring that food comes from local sources.

Millennials aren't leaving their future to chance. We're creating a greener America today with a call for proposals to ensure our energy security and local movements to build community gardens, like the effort led at Arizona State University by Joshua Judd and other Roosevelt members.

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3. Wellness and Coverage

Our American Dream is more often a loft in the city with diverse people, food, culture, work, and a hybrid than a McMansion in the suburbs. It includes our wellness, and this New Deal for the Millennial America includes the guarantee that livable cities provide access to healthy food for all American people. The Millennial Generation -- the most under-insured of any alive right now -- also demands insurance coverage for all and innovative efforts to ensure access to preventative care.

We'll get there by 2040, starting with groundbreaking efforts to provide care to some of our most vulnerable. A Roosevelt member from Colorado College, David Silver, for example, is helping to pave the way to health care access for rural American using excess T.V. bandwidth to provide preventative care via "telehealth."

4. Entrepreneurship and a Social Safety Trampoline

Why are Millennials moving back to the forgotten places in America: post-industrial centers like Detroit, New Orleans, and Cleveland? So they can create a sweeping impact and experiment with new forms of entrepreneurship and social innovation. They are organizing employee-owned businesses, starting co-ops, and, in the case of Roosevelt alums Joe Shure and Rohan Mathew, creating successful nonprofits like the Intersect Fund to empower would-be entrepreneurs through microloans and start-up support.

But in order to pursue our innovative ideas, we need security; a flexible social safety net. And we need financial institutions that are responsive to their communities. Wages have stagnated. Benefits have decreased. As government protection of our social insurance has been cut over the last 30 years, the income inequality in our country has also significantly increased. Millennials demand equal access and equal opportunity. Our safety net should inject funding into the system when it's needed, provide retraining opportunities, ensure health care and unemployment insurance, and, instead of catching people near the bottom -- like a net -- function like a trampoline and bounce everyone back into high-functioning roles in society.

To reduce the socioeconomic gap in this country, everyone should pay taxes on their income, even if they make a lot of it -- their fair share. By just repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, we could move substantially closer to lowering the barrier to entrepreneurship by investing in a strong safety net and providing this essential economic security to all Americans.

5. America as a World Super-Partner

Millennials want the United States to continue to act as a global leader. But they envision the U.S. as a "super-partner" in world affairs. They favor a proactive U.S. foreign policy that stresses the use of "smart power" to achieve global security through active diplomacy, efficient development, and sharing defense responsibilities with its allies. Young people are already working to prove the effectiveness of this approach. Roosevelt member Jacob Helberg, for example, is working directly with Haitian NGOs to implement his idea to build a micro-community in Haiti reflective of the best practices learned by other nations.

If you're skeptical that our generation can accomplish all of this, we're working to prove you wrong. Because we're committed to fiscal responsibility in addition to the list of priorities above, we recognize that our priorities have the burden of cost, and, at a time when the nation is locked in heated debate over the budget, we're answering the call. While organizations from across the spectrum are rushing to put forth their plans, the Campus Network is designing our own ‘Budget for Millennial America' as we speak.

Want to help?
The greatest lesson to be learned from examining this list of Millennial values, priorities, and initiatives is that young people nationwide are prepared to design the innovative solutions and campaign for the change required to achieve our vision.

Do you have your own ideas for change? Contact one of our student policy strategists so that you can get involved in our national policy initiatives. Get published in our 10ideas series. You can even get paid to work with us over the summer in Washington, DC or Chicago through our Roosevelt Summer Academy program. We're designing and achieving the future that we want to inherit.

Thanks for paving the way, FDR. Happy Birthday, and we hope we're making you proud.

Hilary Doe is the National Director of the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network. Reese Neader is the Roosevelt Campus Network's Policy Director.