Steve Kagen Quotes

Although children are only 24 percent of the population, they're 100 percent of our future and we cannot afford to provide any child with a substandard education.

This is not a skill problem, this is a will problem. Does America have the will to make education a priority? We know the things that work. Why don't we scale up those things that do work.

All you've got to do is go back and look in the early 1900s and see what we had in Texas without public education and realize what it has done for the state.

America's public schools have served their purpose. Free and compulsory education was good for a somewhat unpromising young nation.

The greatest obstacle to those who hope to reform American education is complacency.

I believe the government should ensure all children are provided with a good education.

There is nothing more important to our Nation's future, to our homeland security, and to our economy than ensuring we have a top-notch educational system that is the envy of the world.

President-elect Bush spoke in a forceful and candid manner that it is his passion that all children should have access to a first class education.

Over-reliance on strictly economic justifications has already begun to hurt the quality and range of education at every level of American life.

I am going to use every rostrum and every forum and every searchlight that I can to tell the people of the country and their elected representatives that we can no longer afford overcrowded classrooms and half-day sessions. We just must not, we just cannot afford the great waste that comes from the neglect of a single child.

Of all our institutions public education is the most important. Everything depends on it, the present and the future.

Equal access to public education has been achieved. But what is the good of access to a failing school?

When we set up our kids for failure, we set up our workforce for failure, and we set up our economy for failure. I can't emphasize enough the importance, the absolute importance, of education in achieving long-term economic growth.

We cannot, as a country, improve economically, socially, and culturally without quality education.

What we need is an education system that works for every child, not a select few. This starts with providing a quality education for our youngest Americans so they can learn, grow, and become prosperous citizens.

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.

We need to focus on helping EVERY child to get a world-class education in EVERY school in this country.

We can't afford to sacrifice another generation of American children to bureaucratic politics. We've got to get it done. The future, the health, the life - our nation depends on it and it's just foolish to think or act otherwise.

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

I believe we need a national amendment which will guarantee every child in America the promise of not just an equal education but a high-quality equal education.

Even on education, his one accomplishment, the Leave No Child Behind Act, and he has left it unfunded.

Teach For America provides one of the most critical pipelines for bringing new talent into public education.

The promise of education reform can never be fulfilled without adequate funding, and by shortchanging our schools, President Bush is breaking his promise to our children.

If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.

I look back and see the kids who made it through school - it made a huge difference in their lives, which made me believe in the power of public education and what it can do for individuals and communities and the state.