Marva Collins Quotes

It's the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.

To this end the greatest asset of a school is the personality of the teacher.

We're not trying to be the only route into teaching. We do put enormous energy into understanding what differentiates the most successful teachers.

The single most important thing in a child's performance is the quality of the teacher. Making sure a child spends the maximum amount of time with inspirational teachers is the most important thing.

Good teachers cost a lot; but, poor teachers cost a lot more.

The quality of an education system can never exceed the quality of its teachers.

Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

As a kid at school, I had a lot of really good teachers and I had a lot of really bad teachers, and I just know how much of an impact those can have on a young child. To be one of the good teachers - I want to have that kind of impact.

If you improve a teacher's self-esteem, confidence, communication skills or stress levels, you improve that teacher's overall effectiveness across the curriculum.

You wouldn't tolerate an underperforming surgeon in an operating theatre, or a underperforming midwife at your child's birth. Why is it that we tolerate underperforming teachers in the classroom?

There is no education system in the world - none at all - that's better than its average teacher.

I do think we know that a teacher who knows what he or she is doing, knows their subject matter, and knows how to impart knowledge to kids is a critical piece of closing the achievement gap.

We are working essentially to build a leadership force of folks who will, during their first two years of teaching, actually put their kids on a different trajectory - not just survive as a new teacher, but actually help close the achievement gap for their kids.

People think of teachers who are born to teach, and you think of all these charismatic folks. Some of the most successful teachers are some of the least charismatic, interestingly. But they have a gift of figuring out what motivates people.

Teachers themselves know if there's a colleague who can't keep control or keep the interest of their class, it affects the whole school.

Paying teachers more improves student achievement.

I don’t believe curriculums are the key to education, I believe teachers are.

The single most important factor in determining [student] achievement is not the color of skin or where they come from. It is not who their parents are or how much money they have. It is who their teacher is.

The main difference in the effectiveness of teaching comes from the thoughts the teacher has had during the entire time of his or her existence and brings into the classroom. A teacher concerned with developing humans affects the students quite differently from a teacher who never thinks about such things.

I frequently meet ex-pupils who seem to think I didn't totally ruin their educations, so that's something.

I had, out of my sixty teachers, a scant half dozen who couldn't have been supplanted by phonographs.

Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching.

We need to identify the least effective or ineffective teachers and for those people we need to either quickly accelerate their practice or move them out of the profession. That's what I believe and quite frankly I have never met anybody at least to my face who said they disagree with that notion.

... there is no valid teaching from which there does not emerge something learned and through which the learner does not become capable of recreating and remaking what has been taught.

I care not what subject is taught, if only it be taught well.