James S. Coleman Quotes

Millennials are not deeply familiar with school choice, and have some reservations, especially about the types of institutions that a student might choose to attend with taxpayer dollars.

President Bush and I had asked Congress to appropriate a half-billion dollars to school vouchers. We didn't get it, and we were disappointed. But we did not go out and form a corporation to pay for it. That would have been a problem.

And before our current legislature adjourns, we intend to become the first state of full and true choice by saying to every low and middle-income Hoosier family, if you think a non-government school is the right one for your child, you're as entitled to that option as any wealthy family; here's a voucher, go sign up.

Arizona is a national leader in school choice with both charter schools and tuition tax credits giving parents and their children more school choices than ever before.

The problems of public schools will not be solved by cutting off the source of their funding, which is what vouchers are.

Direct Grants, private schools which took huge numbers of state pupils, involved effective co-operation between state and private sectors - a thing all modern governments claim they want. So why were they abolished? And why aren't they now restored?

I have long been an advocate of school choice, but I also believe the problem lies with school administrators and union leaders who refuse to believe there is such a thing as a bad school.

The White House, in advancing the agenda for a [school] "choice" plan, rests its faith on market mechanisms. What reason have the black and very poor to lend their credence to a market system that has proved so obdurate and so resistant to their pleas at every turn?

To me, it looks like an opportunity for school choice. I'd also like to see a pilot program to allow true school choice ? vouchers.

We must revamp K-12 education law to ensure Washington does not stand in the way of meaningful reforms.

I think the whole system of education would change if I were in charge and had the ability to make changes. I don't think I would keep Princeton exactly being Princeton.

I just have a position that any child that's in a failing school should be able to get out, or be in a position to have that school fixed.

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.

Listen, if the mayor wants to have a debate about education in this city, I got three words: bring it on.

In the education debate, people are so passionate about their ideas that we often end up expending more energy shouting at each other than we do pushing for the fundamentals to success in all schools.

I hope to see the day when as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over …

The key for all cities is whether you turn the public schools around.

Keep the Federal skunk out of our schools.

I am going to use every rostrum and every forum and every searchlight that I can to tell the people of the country and their elected representatives that we can no longer afford overcrowded classrooms and half-day sessions. We just must not, we just cannot afford the great waste that comes from the neglect of a single child.

The abolition of the separate school system in the south raises serious practical problems.... We face the abolition of the public school system. Boldness is essential but wisdom is indispensable.

The most important domestic issue we face is education…and education is so broken.

I'm not knocking private schools, but I owe it to my kids to let them grow up in a place where private school isn't required. They're only in school 6-8 hours a day; they have to live in their neighborhood 24 hours a day. I didn't want them growing up in a place where anybody with the means had abandoned their public schools.

Continued adherence to a policy of compulsory education is utterly incompatible with efforts to establish lasting peace…. the state, the government, the laws must not in any way concern themselves with schooling or education. Public funds must not be used for such purposes. The rearing and instruction of youth must be left entirely to parents and to private associations and institutions.

To restore our public schools, we must put an end to the selfish agenda of the union bosses.

Improving our nation's education system has long been the cornerstone of my policy agenda.