Coming to the civil rights movement in the twentieth century, we begin to have this idea that's still with us today, which is that the main purpose of public education is closing achievement gaps.

I believe everyone in the education sector should be looking at evidence, reassessing, making tweaks to figure out what works, I think it's a positive model.

If you look at the early nineteenth century you see the idea that we educate children to be voters and to be participants in our popular democracy. And then at the turn of the century when more and more immigrants are coming into the schools, Americanization becomes a more explicit part of the agenda.

Just in general, when we look at our school system, there is so much overlap with our criminal justice system in terms of our low-income youth.

I don't think school reform should be motivated by missionary zeal. I think it should be motivated by evidence of what works.

There's a small movement of teacher-led schools across the country. These are schools that don't have a traditional principal, teachers come together and actually run the school themselves. That's kind of the most radical way, but I think something that's more doable across the board is just creating career ladders for teachers that allow certain teachers after a certain number of years to inhabit new roles. Roles mentoring their peers, helping train novice teachers to be better at their jobs, roles writing the curriculum, leading on lesson planning.

Just to deliver one high-quality 45 minute lesson requires many hours of planning in advance.