It's easy to have faith when everything is going great. The real test of faith is when you're facing something that only your faith in God will get you through.

I graduated from Bowdoin College and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Then I left and took a job teaching really poor inner-city white kids in Boston. It was interesting to me because I'd never been around poor whites before.

Why is it that when we had rotary phones, when we were having folks being crippled by polio, that we were teaching the same way then that we're doing right now?

You have to be prepared to think outside the box...Stand back and think about what we could do creativity. We've got to do that to push the field forward.

Education is the only billion dollar industry that tolerates abject failure.

I want to be a children’s hero… Children need heroes because heroes give hope; without hope they have no future.

Over the past five years, I've met several presidents, several secretaries of education ... and there is no plan. If you want to save your children, you're going to have to do it yourself. It's just us.