School Accountability Quotes

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

If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state, and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you're liable to be given more money to do it with. Well, we've discovered that money alone isn't the answer.

Legislatures not driven to desperation by the problems of public education may be able to see the threat in vouchers negotiable in sectarian schools.

I'm clear that we do need to improve what's happening in our schools.

I have long been an advocate of school choice, but I also believe the problem lies with school administrators and union leaders who refuse to believe there is such a thing as a bad school.

I believe there ought to be school choice, so that parents can choose within the public school system.

As damaging as the obsessive emphasis on testing often proves to be for kids in general, I believe that the effects are still more harmful in those schools in which the resources available to help the children learn the skills that will be measured by these tests are fewest, the scores they get are predictably the lowest, and the strategies resorted to by principals in order to escape the odium attaching to a disappointing set of numbers tend to be the most severe.

The problem with public school is not overcrowding in the classroom. The problem is not teacher unions. The problem is not underfunding or lack of computer equipment. The problem is your damn kids.

No Child Left Behind taught us that parents, teachers and state and local leaders are more suited to address students' needs than a one-size-fits-all accountability system developed by Washington bureaucrats.

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.

Earlier today, Arnold Schwarzenegger criticized the California school system, calling it disastrous. Arnold says California's schools are so bad that its graduates are willing to vote for me.

When I was mayor of New York, my views changed. I began as mayor of New York City thinking that I could reform the New York City school system. After two or three years, four years, I became an advocate of choice, of scholarships, and vouchers, and parental choice, because I thought that was the only way to really change the school system.

The debate about who decides what gets taught is fascinating, albeit excruciating for those who have to defend the schools against bunkum.

The public education landscape is enriched by having many options - neighborhood public schools, magnet schools, community schools, schools that focus on career and technical education, and even charter schools.

Our public education system does a great job. I don't think it's broken. We aren't interested in doing reform for reform's sake. I believe in public education; it did a great job for me. It deserves our support and encouragement.

For many years we have spent a great deal of effort and money on school reform. Yet where are we today?

I don't want the values of others being imposed on my children in my school, and I don't think that should be happening in a public school or a private school.

In my mind, there is no reason public school reform should be a partisan issue.

Schools should be open. If it's a public education, and the school in your district is poor-performing, you should be able to put your student or kid wherever you want.

Standardized tests are an indicator of the kind of service taxpayers are receiving - and whether schools, educators and policymakers are doing their jobs. In the United States, taxpayers spend almost $600 billion annually on public education, so it's not unreasonable to ask what all that money is producing. In fact, it's irresponsible not to know.

Hillary Clinton wants to leave behind No Child Left Behind.

All schools that receive public funding should be accountable, yes.

You can't just abandon accountability measures in schools... Educators want that because otherwise they can't identify achievement-gap issues for students.

Testing is not a substitute for curriculum and instruction. Good education cannot be achieved by a strategy of testing children, shaming educators, and closing schools.

It's not how much you spend, it's how you spend it. We have been putting a lot of money into education in the state of Nevada, and it's gotten us to 50th in the country in graduation rates. We needed more accountability in our system.