Michael Clarke Duncan Quotes

To encourage more top-caliber students to choose teaching, teachers should be paid a lot more, with starting salaries more in the range of $60,000 and potential earnings of as much as $150,000.

Teachers have the hardest and most important jobs in America. They're building our nation. And we should appreciate them, respect them, and pay them well.

I think good teachers are underpaid.

Our teachers at the public school level are the most underpaid for the importance of their job in America.

When we become a really mature, grown-up, wise society, we will put teachers at the center of the community, where they belong. We don't honor them enough, we don't pay them enough.

I worship teachers. They can't be paid enough. It depresses me that society sees them as somehow expendable.

We must be willing to pay inspiring math and science teachers, who have high paying alternatives in industry, more to teach and reward students who take more challenging courses in high school.

We can pay teachers a hundred thousand dollars a year, and we'll do nothing to improve our schools as long as we keep the A, B, C, D, F grading system.

Teachers need to be paid like professionals.

Paying teachers more improves student achievement.

Merit pay has failed repeatedly, and it's no surprise. When you base teacher pay on standardized test scores, you won't improve education; you just promote the high-stakes testing craze that's led parents, students and educators to shout 'Enough!' all across the country.

You can get rid of the teacher certification requirements, and you're still not going to have a rush of incredibly high-quality people going into teaching as long as teachers are valued in the way they currently are. The way we value people is by how much we pay them.

The fundamental problem for the teaching profession is how undervalued it is and how underpaid teachers are.

With respect to teachers' salaries .... Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority.

We are paying teachers who are in charge of our human capital, arguably more important than our financial capital, a very tiny fraction of what Wall Streeters are paid.

The last thing we need to do, relating to teachers, is the key to a good education in this country is a strong teacher. I would have a minimum wage for all our teachers, $40,000 per year.

We've got to make sure that teachers are respected, that they are rewarded, that young people like yourself who have talent and want to work with people, that you're able to support yourself and live out a great life being a teacher.

Teachers don't need as much as $140,000 a year, ... But, perhaps some senators don't need $140,000 a year either.

If I were president? First thing I'd do is take care of the schoolteachers. I'm not saying we should start 'em out with six figures, but in some places they've got to be mother, father, brother, sister, and mentor. They're real important people. Let's give 'em a raise - and attract the best people to the job.

It's no accident that Cinderella has been in the culture for thousands of years, and in cross cultures. I've traveled a bit recently, and in Russia, they completely believe they own this tale. And in Italy, they feel it absolutely is part of who they are. There is a timeless web to it.

Looking at the doctrine of Darwinism, which undergirded my atheism for so many years, it didn’t take me long to conclude that it was simply too far-fetched to be credible. I realized that if I were to embrace Darwinism and its underlying premise of naturalism, I would have to believe that: 1. Nothing produces everything 2. Non-life produces life 3. Randomness produces fine-tuning 4. Chaos produces information 5. Unconsciousness produces consciousness 6. Non-reason produces reason....The central pillars of evolutionary theory quickly rotted away when exposed to scrutiny.

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.

I'm the biggest sports fan there is, I love sports, but I'm still convinced that it's teachers who deserve the big salaries, not athletes.

I believe government should be loyal to parents, teachers and children.

Americans have become conditioned to believe the world is a gray place without absolutes; this is because we’re simultaneously cowardly and arrogant. We don’t know the answers, so we assume they must not exist. But they do exist. They are unclear and/or unfathomable, but they’re out there. And—perhaps surprisingly—the only way to find those answers is to study NBA playoff games that happened twenty years ago. For all practical purposes, the voice of Brent Musburger was the pen of Ayn Rand.