William Bennett Quotes

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

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

I'm a product of public schools. They are resource-challenged, and when you take those dollars away from public schools and send them to private schools, you're further starving the system.

We're not proposing any shifting of funding from public schools to private schools.

Latinos care about education, yes, so we need reform, not just money.

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.

Our public school system is our country's biggest and most inefficient monopoly, yet it keeps demanding more and more money.

The abolition of the separate school system in the south raises serious practical problems.... We face the abolition of the public school system. Boldness is essential but wisdom is indispensable.

Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interferes with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.

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.

Much of the criticism centered around Betsy DeVos focuses on her lack of experience with public schools. While she has shown some interest in 'protecting' students from the non-existent threat of grizzlies wandering onto their campuses, she has never run, taught in, attended, or sent a child to a public school.

Charter schools were supposed to compete with public schools, and in turn, that competition was meant to improve education. But that wasn't the end result.

Our educational establishment is failing; it is past time for courage, honesty, and action commensurate with the need, particularly here in the United States.

A core part of Teach For America's mission has always been affecting positive change in the traditional public school system.

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.

And I think that we in America need to understand that many schools need improvement, and particularly with respect to how they're serving minority children.

The inequalities are greater now than in '92. Some states have equalized per-pupil spending but they set the 'equal level' very low, so that wealthy districts simply raise extra money privately.

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

During my time as a state legislator, I've pushed for significant investment in public school districts. In Congress, I would look forward to increasing federal public investment in education through initiatives like Race to the Top.

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.

It's time to update traditional public schools, charter schools, home schools, online schools and parochial schools. Let the dollars follow the child instead of forcing the child to follow the dollars, so that every child has the opportunity to attain an education.

To me, the burden of proof isn't on people looking for ways to improve our schools; it's on people who want to keep things the same. Our current system isn't working, and too many kids are being left behind.

Frankly, I'm not sure how far I would get if I attended public school today. It's not just that public schools aren't producing the results we want - it's that we're not giving them what they need to help students achieve at high levels. K-12 education in the United States is deeply antiquated.

I started Knewton to do my bit to fix the world's education system.

If you're going to have a public subsidy to education, vouchers are clearly a better way of delivering it. They should result in some loosening up and privatization of the government school system.