John Ruskin Quotes

The Time to Succeed Coalition brings together an unprecedented group of leaders from education and business, communities and academia to say that it is time to strike the shackles of an outdated school calendar from our disadvantaged schools.

I'm clear that we do need to improve what's happening in our schools.

Everybody does good things, but I'm talking about making major changes in the educational system that would impact an entire race. I'm talking about stopping these young gang members from killing one another. I'm talking about keeping prisons from overflowing.

I'm intending to work on juvenile justice reform, sentencing reform, reentry, drug treatment, access to mental health care.

Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.

The draconian spirit that seeks to enhance penalties and to lower the age at which juveniles will be tries as adults, is part of the 'whole cloth' of three strikes. Our failure to address the depair of our inner-city youth is only delayed by our over-confidence in a stance that is 'tougher than thou.'

Our society spends a lot of money on prison bars. For the sake of our kids, let's invest in monkey bars.

Also, if we take back our schools and concentrate on improving them so our children get a better education, they will be better trained to compete for a job locally.

Frankly, I'm not sure how far I would get if I attended public school today. It's not just that public schools aren't producing the results we want - it's that we're not giving them what they need to help students achieve at high levels. K-12 education in the United States is deeply antiquated.

Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.

Well, I don't think prisons are the answer to everything, obviously.

Society during the last hundred years has been alternately perplexed and encouraged respecting the two great questions: how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?

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.

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

We build more prisons than we do classrooms; the quality of the prisons is better than the quality of the classrooms.

For many years we have spent a great deal of effort and money on school reform. Yet where are we today?

The United States imprisons many non-violent offenders who could instead be required to pay fines, perform community service, and make restitution to their victims… Maintaining our vast network of prisons consumes resources that could be better spent on education and other crime prevention efforts... Rather than reforming offenders, prison too often degrades and dehumanizes prisoners, making the task of rehabilitation and reentry into society even more difficult.

If we have to build more prisons, it means we have failed.

What makes a lot of sense is that, while people are incarcerated, give them the tools they need to be able to have a productive, lucrative living when they leave so they can provide for their families and break that cycle of recidivism.

So if you want a really effective criminal justice strategy, you don't build bigger prisons, you invest money in young kids - and you accept that it's going to take years to work through, but it's a more effective strategy.

I do look upon the secretary of education's primary responsibility as the quality of education that - and improving the education that every child in American public schools receives.

Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn't have to put them in prisons?

Together, we will reclaim America's schools, before ignorance and apathy claim more young lives.

The cure for crime is not the electric chair, but the high chair.

No Child Left Behind's fourth-grade gains aren't learning gains, they're testing gains. That's why they don't last. The law is a distraction from things that really count.