Contributor

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., U.S. Senate

Michael Bennet, U.S. Senator for Colorado, served most recently as the Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools. As a dedicated public servant with comprehensive experience as a businessman, Bennet has a proven record of facing tough tasks at critical times. As Superintendent, Bennet inherited a School District whose achievement rates were flat and, where, for year after year, budgets were cut. Working with Denver Public Schools' principals and teachers, Bennet worked to improve student achievement and classroom performance, while also overseeing a halt to years of budgetary cuts in the Denver Public Schools. While Bennet will be the first to admit the district has much more work to do, since his tenure at the helm of DPS, achievement and graduation rates have gone up, with Denver's kids growing faster than all the kids in the state on every single test at every single grade level with the exception of one math test.

Now in the United States Senate, Bennet is using his experience as a school superintendent to transform public education in America so that it prepares students to compete in the 21st Century. Working with his colleagues, Bennet's focus is on transformational reform that reinvents our schools as magnets for talent, centers for communities, and incubators of innovation. Since arriving in the Senate, he has introduced legislation in support of school-based health centers to help give kids access to quality health care at school and legislation that would make it easier for schools to enroll eligible kids in free-meal programs.

Bennet has also served as Chief of Staff to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. He earned his bachelor's degree with honors from Wesleyan University and his law degree from Yale Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of The Yale Law Journal. Bennet and his wife, Susan Daggett, a successful natural resources lawyer, are the proud parents of three daughters, Caroline (9), Halina (7), and Anne (4).