American Education has a long history of infatuation with fads and ill-considered ideas. The current obsession with making our schools work like a business may be the worst of them, for it threatens to destroy public education. Who will Stand up to the tycoons and politicians and tell them so?

One of the persistent ironies of reform is the impossibility of predicting the full consequences of change.

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

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.

You can't lead your troops if your troops do not trust you.

Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education.

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