David Lammy Quotes

As a kid growing up in public housing, I didn't always get show up at the first day of school with a new backpack full of supplies. Having the school supplies I needed would have made me feel more prepared and ready to learn.

Poverty is so significant that we can't expect to overcome the impacts of poverty in schools.

You can't expect kids who don't have enough to eat to do well.

Head Start is designed to ensure that all children - regardless of their family's income, race, or ethnic background - are able to enter kindergarten ready to learn.

Kids who live in low income areas face extra challenges and show up at schools that were not designed to meet their extra needs.

Public schools were designed as the great equalizers of our society - the place where all children could have access to educational opportunities to make something of themselves in adulthood.

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.

A family living at the poverty level is unlikely to be able to afford a computer at home. Even with a computer, access to the Internet is another significant expense. A child might borrow a book from a public library; but it is not possible to take a computer home.

I came to accept during my freshman year that many of the gaps in my knowledge and understanding were simply limits of class and cultural background, not lack of aptitude or application as I'd feared.

The government gets it right on Head Start. We are providing opportunities for children in underserved areas where parents may not be able to afford preschool so they can begin their schooling with a running or Head Start.

Remember that disadvantage is less about income than environment. The best metrics of child poverty aren't monetary, but rather how often a child is read to or hugged.

Poor children fare worse than rich children on just about everything that social scientists measure.

Some people say that we will never fix education in America until we fix poverty. I think that they have it exactly wrong. We will never fix poverty until we fix education.

In the developed world, income inequality within the country is the most important determinant of health standards and life expectancy.

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

To give every child a fair chance to succeed, we need to give them the best possible start in life. For far too many that isn't happening.

Those who are able to afford to live in a neighborhood with 'good schools' will do so, knowing that a good education is the key to good opportunity for their children.

I know people talk about poverty and other factors, but there is very little I can do to ensure that a child has a stable two-parent home. But what if we can give them a shot in the classroom with a stable, high-standards environment?

I've been building classrooms for children. Computer labs for kids. It's such a huge problem and so many children just aren't given a chance in life.

I've never believed the charter movement was exclusively for socially and economically disadvantaged kids.

Cutting NASA education funds would most severely affect students from low- to middle-income families and students from non-Ivy League-level schools.

Schools alone are not to blame for underachievement. The breakdown of the family, poverty, and decaying cities with eroding tax bases have made a good public school education nearly impossible in many parts of the country.

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.

It has been convincingly demonstrated that countries where there are high rates of poverty, or high rates of economic inequality, are the countries with the highest rates of religious beliefs.

Half of all kids in public education are below the poverty line. Two-thirds of the achievement gap comes from factors outside of school. Teachers influence about seven to ten percent of what happens in kids' lives. When you think about those statistics, you have to think about how to re-envision education so it's holistic and so we share responsibility.