Gary Johnson Quotes

Keep the Federal skunk out of our schools.

The Federal Government does not have a huge role in education and most parents like it that way.

The [teachers’] unions and the [school] districts have very different stakes in local control. The districts want the money and the programs that higher level governments can provide, but they also want autonomy in determining how resources are allocated. The unions are much less wedded to local autonomy. Indeed, much of their lobbying at the state level is to limit the autonomy of the districts.

I believe in local control of education.

Latinos care about education, yes, so we need reform, not just money.

I'm not one of those who thinks the only way to fix what's wrong with American education is to throw more money at it. We also need to do it much better.

Giving education away for free is a really good idea, but it can't be the future of education. There has to be a business model around it that actually works.

There's no particular relationship between spending and educational results. Most education spending is actually on salaries, and that's allocated according to political muscle.

The demand that school finances be transferred away from local school districts to the state and/or federal government has been a long-time favorite of the educationist lobbies.

The federal government has a very limited role in the schools…It’s the ‘he who has the gold makes the rules’ principle. The federal government only pays 8 percent of the school costs. The state and local government, 92 percent… Our federal role in education has been the needs of the neediest students.

I think that there should be national standards in reading and math and maybe history and civics….We have a culture of non-compliance with Federal requirements in education.

Parents and teachers alike are alarmed by this top-down approach to education that wrongly ties education money for states to the adoption of academic standards that do not fully reflect the values of South Carolina.

When it comes to education, no solution, not even ones we like, should be dictated or run from Washington, D.C.

I do not support Common Core because there is absolutely no evidence that a big, centralized bureaucracy makes anything better. In fact, there is a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Australia must prioritise education spending. It is not a question of whether or not we have the money, it is a question of how we choose to spend it.

I think we'll have a bigger conversation first within the Republican Party, then with the American people about what's the proper role of the federal government, i do hope that Common Core will be one more, one more reason for us to have this bigger debate, this bigger conversation about the proper role of the federal government in local education.

If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state, and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you're liable to be given more money to do it with. Well, we've discovered that money alone isn't the answer.

The interesting thing now for No Child Left Behind is that there are very few advocates for it; there is no constituency for it. Parents don't like it, administrators don't like it, and kids don't like it, but politicians and bureaucrats in Washington love it--which should be the first indication to you that it is a troubled program.

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

Everyone runs on an education platform. We have Education Presidents and Education Governors and Education Dog Catchers, but the dollars never match the rhetoric.

You can’t reform education without spending some money.

The bloodiest politics in America are educational politics at the local level.

… while they're adding teachers in places like South Korea, we're laying them off in droves. It's unfair to our kids. It undermines their future and ours. And it has to stop. Pass this bill, and put our teachers back in the classroom where they belong.

If the forces behind [education] reform seem scattered and weak those defending the status quo—the unions, the politicians, the bureaucrats, and the vendors—are well organized and well financed…. I am convinced that without a major realignment of political forces, we won’t get the dramatic improvements our children need.

Federal and State mandates don’t do anything for local schools other than to protect failure.