David Brooks Quotes

[Betsy DeVos] does care about charter schools, which are public schools. She does care about choice, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to care about. It's because it's the one issue where the Democratic donor base was really energized, which was the teacher unions.

I'm not sure Betsy DeVos has ever spent a day in a public school. And I don't - I'm pretty sure Donald Trump hasn't.

As the son of a union activist and a lifelong Democrat, I've always thought that privatizing our public schools is not the answer. We must strengthen public schools.

Get rid of Betsy DeVos.

The role of the federal government, if any, is to create more school choice.

Betsy DeVos is not the most informed person on education policy, but I have seen her present a few times, and she presents as a pretty respectable, intelligent person who has cared passionately about education and cares about charter schools.

President-elect [Donald] Trump has made a provocative choice for secretary of education. Betsy DeVos comes from a wealthy Michigan family. She is an advocate for school choice. That phrase means, in essence, directing public education money to charter schools, private schools or parochial schools.

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

One of my main legislative efforts in education is to help expand and replicate successful charter schools. Charter schools are public schools with site-based governance.

Public education is so important - resisting privatization and charterization, high-stakes testing, and defunding. It's important for New York, but it's also important for the country.

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?

[Betsy DeVos] is quite a smart person, capable, pretty sophisticated in subtle thought. And so to me, that puts her in the realm of policy. But we're in a climate where, as today, she tries to visit a school, and she can't even do that because protesters are blocking that.

My gut reaction [on Betsy DeVos] was, oh, my God. We are now back into the education wars.

I believe there ought to be school choice, so that parents can choose within the public school system.

We all have a stake in ensuring that all students have the schools they deserve and that communities are leading this effort, not being left behind. To do that, we must challenge unchecked charter expansion and the forces driving it.

Much of the criticism centered around Betsy DeVos focuses on her lack of experience with public schools. While she has shown some interest in 'protecting' students from the non-existent threat of grizzlies wandering onto their campuses, she has never run, taught in, attended, or sent a child to a public school.

Charter schools are not a panacea.

I support charters, but the right kind of charters. I support charters that support kids who have the highest needs. A charter should be targeting students who are in serious trouble. It should serve students who didn't succeed in public schools when it can help them. Or, at least, charters should agree to accept similar proportions of the kids with the highest needs.

I think charter schools, choice, and frankly school standards need a champion.

If charter schools are not more successful on average than the public schools they replace, what is accomplished by demolishing public education? What is the rationale for authorizing for-profit charters or charter management organizations with high-paid executives, since their profits and high salaries are paid by taxpayers' dollars?

Take Washington, D.C., which spends over $10,000 per student for education whose student achievement would be dead last if Mississippi chose to secede from the Union. Suppose Washington gave each parent even a $5,000 voucher - that wouldn't mean less money available per student. To the contrary, holding total education expenditures constant, it'd mean more money per student remaining in public schools.

90 percent of American schoolchildren are in public schools. And the emphasis on private schools and charter schools and parochial schools is not unimportant.

Charter schools are public schools. They're paid for publicly and they're part of the public system. They just have a more independent structure.

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.

Support charters; insist on change for failing schools.