William Glasser Quotes

I am very fortunate I can send my kids to private school, but everybody does not have the money. If you cannot get your kid in a good school today, your kids are going to be behind the eight ball.

Let me ask you: Should only children of the wealthy have access to quality early education? Should only children of the wealthy have access to a college degree? The answer - the only answer - is: no.

In Colombia, education is sometimes considered a luxury, not a human right. And it's not a priority in the agendas of many leaders.

The public education system works for children of families like mine but it does not work for the children of families who I represent …

Education is the most powerful tool for everything but certainly to create opportunities for yourself, and I know that not everyone has the privilege of an education like here in America.

Poverty is not really as much of an obstacle to educational expansion as it's sometimes made out to be.

The traditional story of economists has been to say education explains what the returns are to school. I say, 'Okay, that's fine, but what explains the education? How much is just a matter of my giving you a poor kid versus a rich kid?'

As we segregate by income into different communities, schools in lower-income areas have fewer resources than ever.

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.

Schools are not equal. There are still the haves and the have-nots.

I grew up in a very progressive family and with a great educational system, and I asked myself, 'Why doesn't everybody have these opportunities for a good education? So why not give back to these kids who didn't grow up with the same privileges I had?'

If we do not provide education for every single American, we are consigning those without an education to second-class status.

If you're poor, you don't often live near a good school. If it's a competitive public school program, our kids are not prepared to enter those programs.

I believe education should be a right for every child, but tragically in many parts of world it is a privilege for certain children whose parents have money. There are 72 million children in the world who don't go to school and many of them are in Africa.

Colleges and universities divide families by income, providing access to the best schools for those with accumulated wealth. Low- or moderate-income families are relegated to the less prestigious schools where the resources for advancement are fewer than those provided at better financed schools.

Better educated than wealthy

The sheltering of upper income children in private schools not only accelerates the deterioration of public education, it hides its consequences from precisely those people who could do something about it.

We still have two public school systems in the United States: One for the haves and one for the have-nots.

Some men will be always able to pay more for their children's education than others; and that those children will, inevitably, win in the struggle of life.

We still have two separate public school systems in this country. It’s not [any longer] based on race; it’s based on economics, but that’s related to race.

Education is not a luxury in colonial areas, but it is as much a necessity as in free countries. It is an amenity to which every citizen has a right. It is a social service which should be the first charge on the finances of a country…

The people with high school degrees and the people who have college degrees are living in two different Americas.

Federal, state and municipal policies have isolated many children, especially in urban districts, into schools that are segregated by race, class and income.

… adult education should be made available … so that our less privileged groups may be able to avail themselves of new openings which require more education than they possess.

The knowledge gap on civics remains wide between students who attend inner-city schools and their peers in middle-class schools