Wonderful teachers should never let themselves be drill sergeants for the state.

I encourage teachers to speak in their own voices. Don't use the gibberish of the standards writers.

When I was young, I was religious.

A dream does not die on its own. A dream is vanquished by the choices ordinary people make about real things in their own lives.

In the book, I write about children in first grade who were taught to read by reading want ads. They learned to write by writing job applications. Imagine what would happen if anyone tried to do that to children in a predominantly white suburban school.

An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there's no longer segregation in America's schools, that our schools are basically equal; neither of these things is true.

Placing the burden on the individual to break down doors in finding better education for a child is attractive to conservatives because it reaffirms their faith in individual ambition and autonomy. But to ask an individual to break down doors that we have chained and bolted in advance of his arrival is unfair.