Michael Bennet Quotes

I've heard a number of our alumni - people who are running schools and school systems - think a lot about different models for the teaching profession.

To get enough of the teachers we need, teaching has to be a great job where talented people are supported and rewarded.

It's critical that states improve how teachers are trained, recruited, evaluated, compensated, advanced, and retained.

I've focused on making sure we have talented teachers and principals in our schools through proposals like the GREAT Teachers and Principals Act and the Presidential Teachers Corps.

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.

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 big shift in approach on education that we are taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.

In many ways, education is a lousy business. Teachers are not normal economic actors; almost all of them work for less money than they might fetch in some other industry, given their skills and advanced degrees.

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 not wait until we have enough trained people willing to work at a teacher's salary and under conditions imposed upon teachers in order to improve what happens in the classroom.

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

I think teaching should be a vocation, and they should be paid more for it.

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.

Teaching is the profession that makes all other professions possible and yet we do not treat teachers as professionals.

… 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.

We don’t get the quality of people going into teaching that other nations do…. When people go teacher bashing, they are making the problem worse.

When people think the issue can be solved, it becomes a moral imperative to be part of the solution. We can do a lot more within our school districts to recruit aggressively, select people according to high standards, invest in their training and development, and foster and reward their leadership. Once we invest more in attracting, developing and retaining teachers, potential recruits will begin to see it as a profession worth considering.

I tell young teachers who are determined to dissent from some of the Draconian aspects of the current orthodoxy that the best form of protection is to be incredibly good at what you do and keep good discipline in class.

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.

I want to attract the best people into teaching.

If you improve a teacher's self-esteem, confidence, communication skills or stress levels, you improve that teacher's overall effectiveness across the curriculum.

The impending teacher shortage is the most critical education issue we will face in the next decade.

Given the professionalism of Michigan teachers, I think they're not teaching because of the financial rewards.

Teachers say their schools of education did not adequately prepare them for the classroom. They would have welcomed more mentoring and feedback in their early years.

I'd like to think I'm a great teacher.