Arne Duncan Quotes

I have a vision of education that spans from early childhood to K-12 to college to the workforce. Because every step along the way is important: a chance for our state to do right by our kids and their parents - or to let them down.

We must provide an improved early education system so that all students have the opportunity to learn and reach their full potential.

If we can make sure that that young boys starting at the age of three or four already knows their colors and their letters and are getting good preschool, and by the time they get into school they've got a good teacher and are getting the support that they need and are able to keep up with their classwork, that is going to do more to reduce the incarceration rate at the same time, obviously, as it increases the college enrollment rate.

We need to have an education system in New Jersey and all over the country that makes all of our kids, either college or career ready. It should be their choice. I mean, every kid doesn't want to go to college. But I think we should aspire to let every child reach his maximum or her maximum potential.

My mother tells this story that when I first went to school, I thought I was going to help the teachers. I didn't realise I was going to get educated.

This year, we must address the Colorado Paradox. We have more college degrees per capita than any state. Yet we lag the nation in the percentage of students who go on to higher education.

Our goal here in New York is to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start a career or start college and to dramatically increase the number of students that graduate from college.

We've got a support system that gives our players a wonderful opportunity to graduate. If they go to class and give good effort, they can graduate from this school, and I believe that's important when you go out recruiting.

Parents have got to become more involved in their children’s education.

Twenty years ago we had the highest percentage of college graduates in the world. Today we are number 11.

One of the best things we can do for our country, for advancing our children, is to upgrade our child care system.

We want every guy to graduate, and we work very hard on that.

The research clearly demonstrates high-quality early childhood opportunities help children succeed.

There's no silver bullet when it comes to helping all children achieve. Great public schools are our best shot.

The government sets targets for increased four-year high school graduation rates as part of its agenda for improving Americans' health.

Educating bold and ambitious children from cradle to career stands as a clear and foundational goal for Georgia.

Some parents expend great efforts to get their kids into the right nursery school or the right preschool, with the thought that that will set them on the path to success, to competitive success especially.

We put [young children] into kindergarten where their reasoning powers are ruined; or, if we can afford it, we buy Montessori outfits that were invented for semi-imbeciles in Italian slums; or we send them to outdoor schools and give them prizes for sleeping.

In Burma, we need to improve education in the country - not only primary education, but secondary and tertiary education. Our education system is very very bad. But, of course, if you look at primary education, we have to think in terms of early childhood development that's going back to before the child is born - making sure the mother is well nourished and the child is properly nurtured.

I take the academic education as seriously as the physical education. That's why I tell parents that the schools can't do it all themselves. The parents can't come home from work and turn on the TV. That's not being a good parent.

Dr. [Paula] Menyuk and her co-workers [at Boston University's School of Education] found that parents who supplied babies with a steady stream of information were not necessarily helpful. Rather, early, rich language skills were more likely to develop when parents provided lots of opportunities for their infants and toddlers to "talk" and when parents listened and responded to the babies' communications.

The education of even a small child, therefore, does not aim at preparing him for school, but for life.

A third of our kids, after we spend more per student than any country in the world other than a couple rounding errors, 30 percent are college- and/or career-ready.

For decades, the public school system failed too many children, so we passed the No Child Left Behind Act and demanded schools show results in return for money.

Home is the first school for us all, a school with no fixed curriculum, no quality control, no examinations, no teacher training