David Brooks Quotes

[Betsy DeVos] is quite a smart person, capable, pretty sophisticated in subtle thought. And so to me, that puts her in the realm of policy. But we're in a climate where, as today, she tries to visit a school, and she can't even do that because protesters are blocking that.

Get rid of Betsy DeVos.

My gut reaction [on Betsy DeVos] was, oh, my God. We are now back into the education wars.

I have seen [Betsy DeVos] present a few times. I don't really know her. But I have seen her present on education policy, and she's not a stupid person.

On the [Betsy] DeVos case, I agree that the gun - her gun position is kind of weird, kind of crazy, but I do think she does know about public schools.

I'm not sure Betsy DeVos has ever spent a day in a public school. And I don't - I'm pretty sure Donald Trump hasn't.

President-elect [Donald] Trump has made a provocative choice for secretary of education. Betsy DeVos comes from a wealthy Michigan family. She is an advocate for school choice. That phrase means, in essence, directing public education money to charter schools, private schools or parochial schools.

I believe public education is the new civil rights battle and I support charter schools.

Would [Betsy DeVos] be my first pick? No. Is she someone who has dedicated her life to education policy? Yes, actually, she has.

I think charter schools, choice, and frankly school standards need a champion.

[Betsy DeVos] does care about charter schools, which are public schools. She does care about choice, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to care about. It's because it's the one issue where the Democratic donor base was really energized, which was the teacher unions.

Support charters; insist on change for failing schools.

All I suggest is to make K-12 like higher education. Higher education in the United States is the best in the world because these institutions compete with each other for your tuition dollar. Let's just bring competition to public education.

The number one issue facing cities isn’t crimes or jobs anymore, it’s public education.

Public education is so important - resisting privatization and charterization, high-stakes testing, and defunding. It's important for New York, but it's also important for the country.

The role of the federal government, if any, is to create more school choice.

The White House, in advancing the agenda for a [school] "choice" plan, rests its faith on market mechanisms. What reason have the black and very poor to lend their credence to a market system that has proved so obdurate and so resistant to their pleas at every turn?

90 percent of American schoolchildren are in public schools. And the emphasis on private schools and charter schools and parochial schools is not unimportant.

I am going to provide school choice and put an end to common core and bring our education local.

When you say you don't think we should have public schools, they can't believe you mean that. You must mean that they should be smaller. But you can't really mean no public schools.

As the son of a union activist and a lifelong Democrat, I've always thought that privatizing our public schools is not the answer. We must strengthen public schools.

The problem with K-12 education is socialism and the solution is capitalism.

I'm not one of those who thinks the only way to fix what's wrong with American education is to throw more money at it. We also need to do it much better.

The unions no longer control the education agenda of the Democratic Party.

Many of those who argue for vouchers say that they simply want to use competition to improve public education. I don't think it works that way, and I've been watching this for a longtime.