No one is mandating merit pay.

I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina.

Even in a time of fiscal austerity, education is more than just an expense.

Borrowing to pay for college used to be the exception; now it's the rule.

Wherever you find something extraordinary, you’ll find the fingerprints of a great teacher.

In America, your zip code or your socioeconomic status should never determine the quality of your education.

We've seen more reform in the last year than we've seen in decades, and we haven't spent a dime yet. It's staggering how the Recovery Act is driving change.

Teachers support evaluations based on multiple measures: student growth, classroom observation and feedback from peers and parents.

To be clear, we the Department of Education want curriculum to be driven by the local level. We are by law prohibited from directing curriculum. We don't have a curriculum department.

The arts significantly boost student achievement, reduce discipline problems, and increase the odds students will go on to graduate from college.

Education is the civil rights issue of our generation.

I suspect that on some level, life is a matter of indefensible loyalties.

Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money and power and influence.

Some people dream of success, while other people get up every morning and make it happen.

I agree with Schopenhauer that one of the most powerful motives that attracts people to science and art is the longing to escape from everyday life.

Those hot pants of hers were so damned tight, I could hardly breathe.

You've got to do everything, everything's got to be pointing in the same direction and you've got to really turn this whole economic engine from one that's based on fossil fuels to one that isn't.

Any time you put a cast like this in compromising circumstances or shake it up a little bit, I think we're all pretty close so we draw on real emotion.

Everyone drank to popular education and to the irrigation of Uzbekistan.

It always makes me proud to love the world somehow- hate's so easy compared.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.