Tyler Cowen Quotes

We should be firing bad teachers.

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

I believe our schools will actually get better if layoffs are done carefully, such that only the very worst teachers are let go.

Many of the best teachers I know are being laid off because their unions value seniority over intellect, passion, creativity, and drive.

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.

All I suggest is to make K-12 like higher education. Higher education in the United States is the best in the world because these institutions compete with each other for your tuition dollar. Let's just bring competition to public education.

We have seen that, in another unfunded mandate, the so-called No Child Left Behind Act, which created tougher standards, and we all support that, but Congress did not provide the money to attract and hire the best teachers.

President Obama and Secretary Duncan have made stronger teacher evaluation a key part of their education reform efforts. Under their signature plan, called 'Race to the Top,' states can win federal support for schools by improving teacher evaluations.

There are far too many ineffective teachers and, in particular, far too many truly terrible teachers who are harming children and poisoning the system.

Put together, what we want is a system that supports, protects, and properly pays good teachers and makes it possible in a responsible and fair way to remove teachers judged to be incompetent or abusive - that's it.

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?

I think the problem with schools is not too many incentives but too few. Because of tenure, teachers' unions, and the fact that teachers generally aren't observed in their classrooms, they can do whatever they want in class.

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.

America needs education reform on all levels to expand quality schools, build on past successes, and lower college debt.

We are fortunate to have some of the greatest and best teachers in the world, but we want to make sure that those few that try to sneak through the system are caught in advance.

We have to build a better education in this country. We need to step it up.

Instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the teachers union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future.

There are teachers' unions around the country realizing they want to improve standards of the profession, improve the quality of their profession, and ultimately attract the best and the brightest to their profession. The vast majority of teachers are dedicated and committed.

It's hard to improve public education - that's clear.

I don't think we have a surplus of fine educators in this country that we can just start dropping them for no reason whatsoever.

It's the way tenure works, together with dismissal protections that tenured teachers have, that no other public employee has, which makes it almost impossible to remove a grossly ineffective and incompetent teacher or, in some cases, even an abusive teacher.

By continuing to increase teacher recruitment and training - and ameliorating wages and working conditions - we will be able to shore up the weaknesses of the French education system.

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

Without any doubt at all, teacher quality is the fundamental differentiator. Not just, incidentally, of education, but I would argue, probably the biggest single differentiator of success for the nations of the 21st Century.

When I talk to teachers, parents, superintendents, my colleagues, everyone wants to fix No Child Left behind. There is great dissatisfaction with No Child Left Behind.