Bob Beckel Quotes

The problems of public schools will not be solved by cutting off the source of their funding, which is what vouchers are.

As the son of a union activist and a lifelong Democrat, I've always thought that privatizing our public schools is not the answer. We must strengthen public schools.

I am increasingly ready to junk the public school system.

While the public school rewards failure by throwing more government money at failing school systems, the voucher system does the opposite.

Charter schools in particular have proven a lifeline for millions of children stuck in chronically failing schools.

We're not proposing any shifting of funding from public schools to private schools.

Public education is so important - resisting privatization and charterization, high-stakes testing, and defunding. It's important for New York, but it's also important for the country.

I'm not sure Betsy DeVos has ever spent a day in a public school. And I don't - I'm pretty sure Donald Trump hasn't.

I believe there ought to be school choice, so that parents can choose within the public school system.

The problem with K-12 education is socialism and the solution is capitalism.

When I was mayor of New York, my views changed. I began as mayor of New York City thinking that I could reform the New York City school system. After two or three years, four years, I became an advocate of choice, of scholarships, and vouchers, and parental choice, because I thought that was the only way to really change the school system.

Albuquerque is my home. I want my kids and all of our children to be able to go to any public or charter school and receive an excellent education.

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

Legislatures not driven to desperation by the problems of public education may be able to see the threat in vouchers negotiable in sectarian schools.

The key for all cities is whether you turn the public schools around.

I'm not knocking private schools, but I owe it to my kids to let them grow up in a place where private school isn't required. They're only in school 6-8 hours a day; they have to live in their neighborhood 24 hours a day. I didn't want them growing up in a place where anybody with the means had abandoned their public schools.

The best schools in Arizona are charter schools. The worst schools in Arizona are charter schools.

One of my main legislative efforts in education is to help expand and replicate successful charter schools. Charter schools are public schools with site-based governance.

The public education landscape is enriched by having many options - neighborhood public schools, magnet schools, community schools, schools that focus on career and technical education, and even charter schools.

The push to defund public schools and reroute taxpayer money to charters and private institutions is actually a very clever strategy by the Right Wing, which has always had a great deal of disdain for a system that forces them to pay taxes toward some other kid's non-religious, science-based education.

I just cannot understand why we can't have better schools. That private schools are the only option for the kind of high-net-worth crowd, I think, is ridiculous. It should be a major initiative. It should be something we're all working on. We have to get our head out of the clouds.

The role of the federal government, if any, is to create more school choice.

90 percent of American schoolchildren are in public schools. And the emphasis on private schools and charter schools and parochial schools is not unimportant.

Charter schools are public schools. They're paid for publicly and they're part of the public system. They just have a more independent structure.

To me, it looks like an opportunity for school choice. I'd also like to see a pilot program to allow true school choice ? vouchers.