American education has been littered with failed fads and foolish ideas for the past century.

Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.

Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.

Can teachers successfully educate children to think for themselves if teachers are not treated as professionals who think for themselves?

Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or or the police department

Congress and state legislatures should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations.

Teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions

The ladder was there, from the gutter to the university, and for those stalwart enough to ascend it, the schools were a boon and a path out of poverty.

Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.

Those who can’t teach, pass laws about how to evaluate teachers.

Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education.

No one has the power to shatter your dreams unless you give it to them.

Making mistakes simply means you are learning faster.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

Remember, a chip on the shoulder is a sure sign of wood higher up.

I think I have character, and that is what people like in me.

There is an equator that runs just under the nose: all that live below the equator are animals; all that live above it are men.

Well this is just a fist. But when I start throwing it around I can leave one hell of a mess.

Take the kinks out your mind, not your hair.

Grief is the doorway to a man's feelings.

The beautiful thing about pain is that it evokes honesty.