Bob Wise Quotes

The government sets targets for increased four-year high school graduation rates as part of its agenda for improving Americans' health.

The arts significantly boost student achievement, reduce discipline problems, and increase the odds students will go on to graduate from college.

A third of our kids, after we spend more per student than any country in the world other than a couple rounding errors, 30 percent are college- and/or career-ready.

From kindergarten to graduation, I went to public schools, and I know that they are a key to being sure that every child has a chance to succeed and to rise in the world.

Again, the truth of the matter is we haven't paid that much attention to high school accountability.

College education is the engine of social mobility in this country.

We have too few college graduates. We also have too few people who are prepared for college.

Far too many of our children today, our students, need remedial education. We have been lying to them. They're not really ready for college. That's not higher education's fault. That's our fault K-12.

My parents always raised us with the idea of having college in mind. You sort of need a college education. It's part of life. It's something that you do - like going to your prom.

One reason I like to highlight reading is, reading is the beginnings of the ability to be a good student. And if you can't read, it's going to be hard to realize dreams, it's going to be hard to go to college. So when your teachers say, read - you ought to listen to her.

You're not going to get to college - you're not even going to be qualified, even to go to a community college, if you don't address the basic problem of literacy in America. And there's no reason - no reason - for us to have that problem.

If we can make sure that that young boys starting at the age of three or four already knows their colors and their letters and are getting good preschool, and by the time they get into school they've got a good teacher and are getting the support that they need and are able to keep up with their classwork, that is going to do more to reduce the incarceration rate at the same time, obviously, as it increases the college enrollment rate.

I think one percent of the population attended college when Wallace Stevens and Robert Frost and Gertrude Stein were at Harvard. Now I think forty percent of Americans have some college education. That's an astronomical change.

One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.

I don't want anybody to be confused that the issue of police and community is one part of a broader set of issues. Our children need to be properly educated. They need to be trained so that they can get jobs and be functional.

The more scholastically educated a man is generally, the more he is an emotional boor.

If knowledge is power and power is knowledge, then how so many idiots be graduating from college?

My parents grew up in poor families where little English was spoken, they both went to college and became teachers. They believed that anything was possible with hard work, and they particularly stressed the importance of education. They instilled that same belief in my sister and me.

When our children are old enough, and if we can afford to, we send them to college, where ... the point is to acquire the skills not of positive thinking but of critical thinking.

All the kids that I grew up with, in an almost idyllic environment - I've got to tell you, it was so wonderful - they've gone on and they're doctors and Ph.D.'s and everybody has a four-year college degree. None of our parents, I think, had a four-year degree.

Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the best in the world, too few American students are pursuing degrees in science and technology. Compounding this problem is our failure to provide sufficient training for those already in the workforce.

A college degree does not lessen the length of your ears; it only conceals it.

Today, you have achieved something special, something only 92 percent of Americans your age will ever know: a college diploma. That’s right, with your college diploma you now have a crushing advantage over 8 percent of the workforce. I'm talking about dropout losers like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg.

If the goal is to dramatically improve college completion rates, not college-going rates by itself but college completion, it's not just a college problem. We need a big focus on early childhood education. Our early childhood education system is pretty good in this country. Not enough students have opportunity. And, very discouragingly, they lose their advantage because they go to poor schools after that. So, let's focus on our babies.

Through lack of education, we're not teaching kids to read and write. So there is the danger that you raise up a generation of morons.