Tavis Smiley Quotes

If we get public education right, everything else will follow. But if we get it wrong, not much else will matter.

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.

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

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.

It's shortsighted not to view the education of a future generation of Americans as a priority for all Americans.

You cannot simply put more money into the same system and get better results, so we will need to reform and innovate in the delivery of education.

I remember when President Bush, George W. Bush, came into office, he focused on No Child Left Behind, and with - and before very long, suddenly, Republicans were thought of as being as interested and as competent in education as Democrats, and why? Because they were talking about it and doing something about it.

If the world's leaders are serious about improving collective well-being, we'd better get serious about prioritizing education in our nations and in our global discussion.

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.

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.

May this plain statement of facts prevail on the friends of the rising generation to interpose for their welfare; that the education of children may no longer be to parent and master a lottery, in which the prizes bear no proportion to the enormous number of blanks.

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.

But then it hasn't really been a focus of our government to make us an educated people.

Once the federal dust settles, whether there is little to spend or a lot, education must continue to be our top priority. We can afford nothing less.

During consideration in the Education and the Workforce Committee this year, Democrats and Republicans worked constructively together to improve the delivery of Head Start services to the target populations.

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.

Like health care, education is something worth spending on and worth investing in, but we're spending more and getting less.

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

It is a sad commentary that today we face a choice between having schools that are a monument to our past - or schools that will be the lifeblood of our future. But since that is our choice, let us resolve to choose wisely.

The Time to Succeed Coalition brings together an unprecedented group of leaders from education and business, communities and academia to say that it is time to strike the shackles of an outdated school calendar from our disadvantaged schools.

For six and a half years, I had responsibility for leading the Labour party policy on education and delivering on our promise of improved opportunities for all our children.

Inner city education must change. Our responsibility is not merely to provide access to knowledge; we must produce educated people.

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

If you stop and think about our history, one of the reasons we had an American century and there is an American dream was because at key points in our history we made very bold decisions about making sure that there was very broad, universal access to quality education.