Freeman A. Hrabowski III Quotes

At the very top state institutions, like UCLA, Berkeley and the University of Texas, however, the trend of downward minority enrollment remains persistent and discouraging.

I couldn't help but to think back to my classmates at Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio. They had the same talent, the same brains, the same dreams as the folks we sat with at Stanford and Harvard. I realized the difference wasn't one of intelligence or drive. The difference was opportunity.

African American children can't be educationally disadvantaged for 12 years and then experience a miracle cure when it comes time for admission into college.

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?'

The promise of equal educational opportunity envisioned by the Brown decision remains unfulfilled.

We have a large underclass in Britain, and a fairly low standard of education. Our best universities are extremely good, but a very significant proportion of the British population that comes out of compulsory schooling with very low standards of education.

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 Tories and the Lib Dems talk about social mobility, but, short of winning the lottery, the only way to guarantee young people from all backgrounds the opportunity to do better and to raise aspirations is through education.

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

The principal challenge of the next phase of the Negro revolution is to make certain that equality of results will now follow. If we do not, there will be no social peace in the United States for generations.

If white people need colleges to furnish teachers, ministers, lawyers, and doctors, do black people need nothing of the sort?

The evidence shows that grammar schools overwhelmingly benefit those from more affluent backgrounds.

No child's future should ever be dictated by what zip code they were born in.

We know that the enemy of upward mobility is not poverty or even other people's success. The enemy of upward mobility is apathy and an educational system that offers choice to the privileged and traps the most vulnerable in unsafe and poor performing schools.

Our family story here is one that we're proud of, and that is that, as the ninth of 10 kids in our family, I was the first who, right out of high school, was able to go to four-year college... it was a big moment in our family's life.

It is not fair to think that when students transit through a K-12 system that is not preparing them for beyond, that somehow we are going to wave a magic wand and things are going to be perfect for them at the higher-ed level.

We will never address the race-based, systemic barriers to health care, equal housing and education without investing in underserved communities.

Canadians would not tolerate it if they really knew there was a whole generation of aboriginal Canadians who have a chance at a better education and are being denied it.

I am a middle-class black, a college professor, far from wealthy, but also well removed from the kind of deprivation that would qualify my children for the label 'disadvantaged.'

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.

We've got to tell our stories to influence culture, and we have to get more people elected who have faced challenges like domestic violence, working minimum-wage jobs, wondering how to get food on the table... regular people.

While many Americans agree that 'the system is rigged' economically, few are aware of the ways in which racial inequality has been structured and embedded in our society. This is why candid, fact-based discussions about racial inequality are so desperately needed.

I'm very lucky I went to a nice school and I live in a very lovely part of London.

If I'd been from a different background, I could have gone to a grammar school, I suppose. I might have been a different person.

I think, for me, the biggest issue is poverty in general, poverty in this time of plenty. It's reflected in homelessness. It's reflected in educational gaps. It's reflected in racial disparities.