Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time.

Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.

An attack on public education is an attack on democracy.

The foundations demand that public schools and teachers be held accountable for performance, but they themselves are accountable to no one. If their plans fail, no sanctions are levied against them. They are bastions of unaccountability.

If charter schools are not more successful on average than the public schools they replace, what is accomplished by demolishing public education? What is the rationale for authorizing for-profit charters or charter management organizations with high-paid executives, since their profits and high salaries are paid by taxpayers' dollars?

In DC, policymakers think that if we can only have high enough standards, tough enough tests, and hold people accountable, we can close the achievement gap. And it hasn't happened. Yet the new law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, is based on the same test-based and market-driven framework and ideology, except it lets the states do it.

Congress and state legislatures should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations.