There’s a belief now that the problem with our schools is parents, that if we just had better parents we would have better performing kids and, therefore, we wouldn’t have a problem at all. But what’s missing in that equation is that you do have a lot of parents in this country who are very involved in their children’s education and who do want something better. They want to see better for their kids. They know that they’re in schools that aren’t performing particularly well and if you look at how we treat those parents, it is quite poorly.
The notion about education has changed and that now it’s sort of much more aligned with, “Well, schools can’t combat poverty. We can’t possibly expect schools to do the work to overcome poverty.” I think that notion which has changed over the last few decades is part, not all, but part of what is maybe leading to people feeling less of a sense of possibility.
In schools where parent involvement is greater, you do have higher achievement levels and better functioning, better performing schools.
Poverty is so significant that we can't expect to overcome the impacts of poverty in schools.
If you grew up in a lower-income community, or less well-off, the belief is that the way to change that circumstance is through education.
We all have to have more rigorous expectations of our kids in America.
We are in tough economic times right now, and the first thing we have to do is look at how we're spending the dollars that we have, and at what kind of return on investment we're getting. Because I think it will show that spending more money without fixing the fundamental flaws in the system won't produce anything different in terms of results. In DC, we were spending a whole lot of money on things that had no positive impact on students' achievement levels.
I have an absolutely unshakable faith in kids, grounded in the fact that I worked for three years in one of the worst public schools in Baltimore, with kids most people would write off because of their backgrounds. But, when I set high expectations, at the end of the day, these kids went from scoring at the bottom on standardized tests, to scoring at the top, despite their unfortunate circumstances.
An education reformer is as important in America as the first lady.
We need to identify the least effective or ineffective teachers and for those people we need to either quickly accelerate their practice or move them out of the profession. That's what I believe and quite frankly I have never met anybody at least to my face who said they disagree with that notion.
I think people don't talk enough about education and what we need to do in our public education system.
We need to do everything we can to ensure every single child has an effective teacher every day, which means we need to identify who are the most highly effective teachers, and we should recognize and reward them for the incredible professionals that they are.
I believe that the teachers unions are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. They were designed to be professional organizations that protect the rights and privileges and pay of their members. The problem is that we don't have an organized national interest group with the same heft as the teachers union that's advocating on behalf of children.
That should be the goal, is that every kid in every neighborhood, despite whatever challenges they may face, are getting a great education in our public schools.
If a country puts its entire focus on making sure that the education system improves, then that's the kind of progress that you can see.
I think for what success looks like for me, it is a world in which you can look at the achievement scores, the academic scores, of any school anywhere in this country [the USA], and you wouldn't be able to look at the score and determine what the racial makeup or the socioeconomic makeup of that school is simply because of the academic achievement levels.
My parents came from an environment where everyone knew that the way to be successful was to get a great education, and that was going to be your ticket in life. If you could succeed in education then you would succeed in life, so that was sort of the driving force behind my parents' upbringing, and therefore kind of how they brought me up.
You may not do well, necessarily, up front, and in order to be the best, you've got to work hard.
My grandfather was a teacher, my grandmother on my mom's side, four of my aunts, my sister-in-law, my best friend. So I've always, my entire life, been surrounded by teachers, and because of that I've had a tremendous respect for what teachers can do, the power that they can have.
My parents were extraordinarily focused on education. It was the topic of every dinner conversation, is are you number one, are you getting all As, if not, why not. You need to do better. So my entire orientation and focus growing up was around doing your best and making sure that you were going to get the best education possible.
I think that one thing that people are missing is that we are never going to be able to fix this country's [American] economy in the long run until we fix our public education system.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: