Joel Klein On Public School Teachers

"In the United States, we draw teachers from the bottom quarter of our college graduates, and our kids in high-poverty neighborhoods get the bottom quarter of the bottom quarter."

- Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education

Teacher Quality Is Critical

"If two average 8-year-olds are assigned to different teachers, one who is strong and one who is weak, the children's lives can diverge in just a few years, according to research pioneered by Eric Hanushek at Stanford. The child with the effective teacher, the kind who ranks among the top 15% of all teachers, will be scoring well above grade level on standardized tests by the time she is 11. The other child will be a year and a half below grade level--and by then it will take a teacher who works with the child after school and on weekends to undo the compounded damage. In other words, the child will probably never catch up."

- Time Magazine

The Problem With Public School Teacher Pay

"There is no reason to excel when the best employees are paid what the worst are paid."

- Education Policy Institute

Teachers And Administrators Will Not Change Public Schools

Improving public schools requires change and public school teachers and administrators do not want the public schools to be changed. Therefore, efforts to improve public schools will have to be done without the support of teacher and administrator unions. Why don't teachers and administrators want the public schools to be changed? Because they are benefiting financially from the never ending increase in spending on public schools. Education reform will change who gets that money and those who are getting that money now do not want that to happen.

Teacher Unions Represent Teachers Not Students

"I'll start representing kids when kids start paying union dues."

Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers