James A. Garfield Quotes

Resolve that neither the state nor nation, nor both combined, shall support institutions of learning other than those sufficient to afford every child growing up in the land of opportunity of a good common school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistical dogmas.

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

I am opposed to the Federal Government spending any money to sustain church schools ….

I am and have always been a strong proponent of public education. But by the virtue of its very nature - publicly funded schools cannot offer the type of spiritual education that Catholic schools have long provided.

Legislatures not driven to desperation by the problems of public education may be able to see the threat in vouchers negotiable in sectarian schools.

The people of Missouri said they expect their elected leaders to support public schools because they know that education is the best economic development tool there is.

I hope to see the day when as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over …

Zealous groups threaten to infringe civil liberties when they seek government support to impose their own religious views on non-adherents. This has taken many forms, including attempts to introduce organized prayer in public schools, to outlaw birth control and abortion, and to use public tax revenues to finance religious schools.

These day schools did invaluable service in the days of the Colony and Commonwealth, and, indeed, in the early days of the Republic; but to their continuation must undoubtedly be ascribed the tardy recognition of the government and people of the fact that no agency for the education of the masses is as effective as the public school.... There is not one public school building owned by the government or by any city or township.

Public education must be viewed from the lens of providing each child with the learning environment that best meets his or her needs. If we can send a low-income child to a parochial school, knowing that his odds of attending college will increase as a result, then that should be our mission.

If it is the duty of the State to educate, it is the duty of the State also to bear the burden of education, namely, the taxation out of which education is provided.

I have no problems with private schools. I graduated from one and so did my mother. Private schools are useful and we often use public funds to pay for their infrastructures and other common needs.

The federal government has a very limited role in the schools…It’s the ‘he who has the gold makes the rules’ principle. The federal government only pays 8 percent of the school costs. The state and local government, 92 percent… Our federal role in education has been the needs of the neediest students.

The public schools are supported entirely, in most communities, by public funds—funds exacted not only from parents, nor alone from those who hold particular religious views, nor indeed from those who subscribe to any creed at all.

There is no neutral aid when that aid principally flows to religious institutions nor is there truly “private choice” when the available choices resulting from the program are predominantly religious.

No sectarian tenets shall ever be taught in any school supported in whole or in part by the State, nations, or by the proceeds of any tax levied upon any community.

We're not proposing any shifting of funding from public schools to private schools.

I went to public schools, which is to say publicly financed.

Millennials are not deeply familiar with school choice, and have some reservations, especially about the types of institutions that a student might choose to attend with taxpayer dollars.

In education, they say either property taxes have to go up, or we'll have poor education - that's a false choice.

I believe public education is the new civil rights battle and I support charter schools.

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.

We need to increase education budgets.

President Bush and I had asked Congress to appropriate a half-billion dollars to school vouchers. We didn't get it, and we were disappointed. But we did not go out and form a corporation to pay for it. That would have been a problem.

The problem with K-12 education is socialism and the solution is capitalism.