Michelle Rhee Quotes

I think higher ed in the U.S. is fairly healthy, and by global standards it dominates, and it makes people more productive. But a lot of our K-12 is a disaster. And the single most important reform would just be to fire the worst ten or 15 percent of teachers in the lot, and we would have massive improvements.

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

We should be firing bad teachers.

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

I believe our schools will actually get better if layoffs are done carefully, such that only the very worst teachers are let go.

Many of the best teachers I know are being laid off because their unions value seniority over intellect, passion, creativity, and drive.

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.

You wouldn't tolerate an underperforming surgeon in an operating theatre, or a underperforming midwife at your child's birth. Why is it that we tolerate underperforming teachers in the classroom?

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.

Teacher compensation isn't the only factor in cultivating great teaching. Other important priorities include changing how we measure student performance, providing more flexibility to teacher-preparation programs, and improving how we train and support principals.

The biggest barrier we've seen to student progress is this: School policies and practices often prevent good teachers from doing great work and even dissuade some talented Americans from entering the profession. This needs to change.

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.

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.

Our teachers deserve better feedback.

Put together, what we want is a system that supports, protects, and properly pays good teachers and makes it possible in a responsible and fair way to remove teachers judged to be incompetent or abusive - that's it.

It's the way tenure works, together with dismissal protections that tenured teachers have, that no other public employee has, which makes it almost impossible to remove a grossly ineffective and incompetent teacher or, in some cases, even an abusive teacher.

We need to do everything we can to ensure every single child has an effective teacher every day, which means we need to identify who are the most highly effective teachers, and we should recognize and reward them for the incredible professionals that they are.

The quality of an education system can never exceed the quality of its teachers.

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

We're not trying to be the only route into teaching. We do put enormous energy into understanding what differentiates the most successful teachers.

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

If teaching isn't rewarding and challenging, we're going to continue to lose our best teachers to work in other fields.

We can pay teachers a hundred thousand dollars a year, and we'll do nothing to improve our schools as long as we keep the A, B, C, D, F grading system.

We are fortunate to have some of the greatest and best teachers in the world, but we want to make sure that those few that try to sneak through the system are caught in advance.