I wrote a work of history, I looked at over 500 sources - I spent three-and-a-half years on the project. I think the most gratifying and wonderful thing about the reaction is that people are learning things from the history that feel relevant to today.

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.

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.

I feel that people have asked me my age I don't actually think that thirty is particularly young for a first book to come out. And I sometimes wonder if a male author would have been asked this question so frequently.

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.

In North Carolina, for example, it takes 15 years to move a teacher's salary from $30,000 to $40,000. So it's really difficult to argue that pay doesn't have something to do with the lack of prestige.

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