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Our experience at Teach For America has been that the more people understand educational inequity, the more they want to do something about it.

I think the most important thing that young people should be taught at school is how they can decide what they're being told is true.

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.

It's Teach For America's responsibility to ensure that all alumni know their voices are heard and valued, and to surface the range of opinion they represent.

I think that books are fundamentally educational.

The public debate about evolution itself, as opposed to whether to teach it, is something else. It is boring, demeaning, and insufferably dull.

Great teachers transcend ideology.

You've never seen me debate anybody. On anything. Ever. My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus another. What the laws of physics say.

There was a very famous leader in Atlanta who thought that education was appropriate, but on the whole, the view was, 'If you're going to keep people down, you have to keep them ignorant. And so, nothing personal, but we just don't want to recognize the attributes that man of learning would bring. Quite threatening, those would be.'

I do think we know that a teacher who knows what he or she is doing, knows their subject matter, and knows how to impart knowledge to kids is a critical piece of closing the achievement gap.