One of the saddest days of my life was when my mother told me Superman did not exist. I was like what do you mean he's not real. And she thought I was crying because it’s like Santa Claus is not real and I was crying because there was no one coming with enough power to save us.

When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching... It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters.

Osama Bin Laden is not going to come here and destroy America. Our education system is doing that just fine.

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.

There is an educational cliff we are walking over right this very second.

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.

If you raise a child, there's no time, you can't be a great parent.