Quote

If we don't empower families to be able to have a quality education, then their children - for the first time in American history, truly the first time - will not have the same economic opportunities.

A lot of schools benefit from parents who are first- or second-generation immigrants, who expect the best for their children.

I envision presenting parents with a marketplace of school choices - public, private, parochial, charter, virtual, blended, and home education. They then can choose the model that best equips their children for success.

And there should not be a limit on the creation of new public schools. We ought to expand choices for parents.

The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wanted. They want two contradictory things. They want to be the same as everyone else, and they want to be different from everyone else. They want acceptance for both.

Schools are successful only insofar as they reduce the dependence of a child's opportunities upon his social origins.

We are the transition from one education to the other.

Public schools were designed as the great equalizers of our society - the place where all children could have access to educational opportunities to make something of themselves in adulthood.

There is a growing acceptance and interest in publicly funded school choice as a catalyst for education reform in general and a way to empower parents to be education reformers.

America's public schools have served their purpose. Free and compulsory education was good for a somewhat unpromising young nation.