Jonathan Kozol Quotes

If there's one thing that 'No Child Left Behind' has proven, it's that more academics don't make for smarter children - or even higher test scores. And yet we somehow refuse to accept this reality.

I wish we could have acted quicker on Detroit or other failing schools.

We cannot ignore the disparity in resources that continue to plague many of our school systems, especially those serving predominantly inner-city minority and impoverished children.

One of the most significant factors contributing to the chasm of educational opportunity is the way that schools are funded.

I saw first-hand that all schools are not created equal, and the students shouldn't have to go without all of the materials that they need for a great education.

The No Child Left Behind Program was an incentive to the schools to get their kids up to snuff on math and science and reading.

Second, when comparing private school and public school test scores, it's like apples and oranges. Public schools have to take everyone, but private schools can be selective. It's not accurate or fair to compare the job they do.

Why do men outperform women on the SAT? The SAT's supposed to predict college grades. Women do better in high school and they do better in college. What's the problem here? Ah, the more you use, the more you start accepting that the SAT's coachable, the more problems you have with it.

I am particularly surprised that certain outlets look at pass rates irrespective of student population. As if inner city high school kids are to fare as well as college students.

ACT and SAT each have their own parts of the country. The GRE has its lock on graduate admissions. And so, one could blame the companies, but really, economically, they have no incentive to change things very much because they're getting the business.

I had been very focused on the issue of education disparities in our country, and literally, by the time kids are just nine years old, in low-income communities, they're already three or four grade levels behind nine-year-olds in high-income communities.

I read so slow. If I have a script, I'm going to read it five times slower than any other actor, but I'll be able to tell you everything in it. It kills me that there are standardized tests geared towards just one kind of child.

When you introduce competition into the public school system, most studies show that schools start to do better when they are competing for students.

When you go somewhere like Kenya and you see how the children don't have pencils and pens, and all of these things are considered luxuries, and what a privilege they see education as and how hungry they are to learn, I wanted to give my brother and sister long lectures. That definitely stayed with me.

The system that had grown up in most states is that wealthy districts with an affluent population can afford to spend a lot more on their public school systems than the poorer districts.

Federal oversight has focused primarily on fiscal accountability and not on educational accountability.

That there be equal educational opportunities for all and in all the States, and that public school expenditure be the same for Negro and white child.

The list of costly services that supplement some children's public education is growing longer and now includes consultants, tutors, and test prep. That's in addition to the homework help some stay-at-home parents can afford to provide.

One of society's thorniest problems is that children from poor families start school lagging badly behind their more affluent classmates in readiness.

Public schools in the late '80s and early '90s were a total mess... we felt that if I was going to have a good educational option in my life, I would have to go to a public school district that actually served its children.

Higher SAT scores mean better college matriculation rates. So it's no wonder that private schools in ultra-competitive environments would grease the qualifying process as much as possible.

Elite private-school educations leave students unprepared for a standardized test with which their public school counterparts are innately familiar.

It just felt wrong that the kids I was teaching didn't have the same access to materials that I did when I was a student.

You can't just abandon accountability measures in schools... Educators want that because otherwise they can't identify achievement-gap issues for students.

I think Common Core is a disaster. That doesn't mean there can't be a little tentacle left of the Department of Education, like 5 percent, just in terms of local coordination, perhaps.