Shaffi Mather Quotes

There are places on Earth, in every country, where, for various reasons, good schools cannot be built and good teachers cannot or do not want to go.

The private schools and the independent schools like Oprah's are really doing well because they've got the best of everything but it certainly puts the spotlight on a system of public education that is still reeling from the apartheid years [in South Africa].

For too long, we financed our schools in a way that has systematically left large segments of our population behind.

In sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 1 in 5 girls make it to secondary school.

If you're poor, you don't often live near a good school. If it's a competitive public school program, our kids are not prepared to enter those programs.

This question of free text books in public schools seems to me one that should be given more consideration than has been done in the past. New York City provides them, individual towns and villages do the same, but the vast number of rural schools, particularly in poorer districts, put the burden on the parents to buy the books the children need.

When we're able to identify disparities in education, we can better determine whether federal grant programs are effectively reaching our students, allowing us to improve how to distribute and implement these funds across communities.

The need is schools dedicated exclusively to the rural segment. If we have a child from a village and a city studying in the same class room, the former is bound to lag behind because children from the urban areas have a better start.

There are not enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education.

If we can show the world that there are students in all sorts of communities who don't have the material they need for a great education, that will be the first major step to doing something about it.

I refuse to accept that the world is so poor, when just one week of global spending on armies is enough to bring all of our children into classrooms.

The truth is that the want of common education with us is not from our poverty, but from the want of an orderly system. More money is now paid for the education of a part than would be paid for that of the whole if systematically arranged.

Every Indian kid has access to MySpace and Facebook. But that doesn't mean they have access to books and great teachers. This idea about bringing digital tech into schools is great, but once again I'll say that this is not how people actually learn.

Public schools in the late '80s and early '90s were a total mess... we felt that if I was going to have a good educational option in my life, I would have to go to a public school district that actually served its children.

In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there's such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.

Elites don't care not one whit about school children. If they truly cared, what they would do is protect them.

I think it goes back to whether or not race and class - that is, race and poverty - is not becoming even more of a constraint. Because with the failing public schools, I worry that the way that my grandparents got out of poverty, the way that my parents became educated, is just not going to be there for a whole bunch of kids.

There are a lot of children in our country that, because of their neighborhood or socio-economic status, do not have the opportunity to attend a good school that will prepare them for life's challenges.

Canadians would not tolerate it if they really knew there was a whole generation of aboriginal Canadians who have a chance at a better education and are being denied it.

We're throwing money down a rat hole drain of public education! We lead the world in public education spending. We lead the world in getting the least for it.

Direct Grants, private schools which took huge numbers of state pupils, involved effective co-operation between state and private sectors - a thing all modern governments claim they want. So why were they abolished? And why aren't they now restored?

Failing to appropriately fund our schools creates more pressure on local communities who are forced to make up the state's shortfall by increasing property taxes.

Our nation's commitment is to provide a quality education to every child to serve the public common good. Accordingly, we must shift the paradigm to think of education funding as investments made in individual children, not in institutions or buildings.

I've been building classrooms for children. Computer labs for kids. It's such a huge problem and so many children just aren't given a chance in life.

I believe that every child in Maryland deserves a world-class education, regardless of what neighborhood they grow up in.