Jeanne Allen Quotes

I'm a little bit tired of people getting credit for improving education by doing the cheapest thing they can do, which is to call for the manipulation of test scores or to create new standards.

No Child Left Behind's fourth-grade gains aren't learning gains, they're testing gains. That's why they don't last. The law is a distraction from things that really count.

Hillary Clinton wants to leave behind No Child Left Behind.

We had rising student achievement across the board because high standards, robust accountability, ending social promotion in third grade, real school choice across the board, challenging the teachers union and beating them is the way to go.

We can pay teachers a hundred thousand dollars a year, and we'll do nothing to improve our schools as long as we keep the A, B, C, D, F grading system.

We must revamp K-12 education law to ensure Washington does not stand in the way of meaningful reforms.

Enacted under President George W. Bush's administration with the promise to focus on individual student achievement and overall school performance, No Child Left Behind was heralded as groundbreaking. And in some ways, it was.

We really shouldn't be running education like a supermarket where you compare prices.

The key for all cities is whether you turn the public schools around.

While the public school rewards failure by throwing more government money at failing school systems, the voucher system does the opposite.

I do support high standards, strong accountability, and local control.

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

'No Child Left Behind' requires states and school districts to ensure that all students are learning and are reaching their highest potential. Special education students should not be left out of these accountability mechanisms.

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.

In Barack Obama, we have a great education president who is rebuilding America. His Race to the Top program is doing more to 'spur us' to improve our public schools than anything we've ever done as a nation.

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.

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.

No Child Left Behind taught us that parents, teachers and state and local leaders are more suited to address students' needs than a one-size-fits-all accountability system developed by Washington bureaucrats.

Before this government came to power, many failing schools were simply allowed to drift on in a pattern of continuing failure. The government is determined to break that pattern and is successfully doing so.

When I was mayor of New York, my views changed. I began as mayor of New York City thinking that I could reform the New York City school system. After two or three years, four years, I became an advocate of choice, of scholarships, and vouchers, and parental choice, because I thought that was the only way to really change the school system.

While NCLB drove important progress on transparency and data disaggregation, I think it's clear that the status quo in public education is not working for our kids or our country.

I'll continue to fight for school choice and home schooling. Do I believe in accountability? You bet I do.

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.

At the federal level, we must help, not hinder, local school boards, parents, teachers and administrators as they make decisions about educating our children.

America needs education reform on all levels to expand quality schools, build on past successes, and lower college debt.