Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job.

In schools where parent involvement is greater, you do have higher achievement levels and better functioning, better performing schools.

If a country puts its entire focus on making sure that the education system improves, then that's the kind of progress that you can see.

I think for what success looks like for me, it is a world in which you can look at the achievement scores, the academic scores, of any school anywhere in this country [the USA], and you wouldn't be able to look at the score and determine what the racial makeup or the socioeconomic makeup of that school is simply because of the academic achievement levels.

Standardized tests are an indicator of the kind of service taxpayers are receiving - and whether schools, educators and policymakers are doing their jobs. In the United States, taxpayers spend almost $600 billion annually on public education, so it's not unreasonable to ask what all that money is producing. In fact, it's irresponsible not to know.

Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job.

You may not do well, necessarily, up front, and in order to be the best, you've got to work hard.