Barack Obama Quotes

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.

Whenever there are changes to school budgets, we know teachers feel it first.

As a Member of Congress from one of the fastest growing States in the country, we hire close to 2,500 new teachers a year, close to 5,000 support staff and faculty.

Barack Obama wants teacher service scholarships.

No one is more important to the future of our state than our teachers.

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.

As a former teacher, it pains me to watch such an essential and rewarding profession suffer due to government neglect.

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.

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.

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

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

Education should be one of our top funding priorities; talking about it does not help the teachers and students who desperately need promises fulfilled.

We have seen that, in another unfunded mandate, the so-called No Child Left Behind Act, which created tougher standards, and we all support that, but Congress did not provide the money to attract and hire the best teachers.

Teachers make a difference, and we would serve our students better by focusing on attracting and retaining the quality teachers by raising teacher pay.

Few things are more important to our country's future than recruiting and keeping great teachers in our schools.

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.

Instead of just giving lip service to improving our schools, I will actually put the kids first and the teachers union behind in giving our kids better teachers, better options and better choices for a better future.

I am deeply concerned with the diminution of the teaching strength of the country as a result of the disproportionately low salaries that are paid to teachers throughout the country.

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.

More than half of my former students teach - elementary and high school, community college and university. I taught them to be passionate about literature and writing, and to attempt to translate that passion to their own students. They are rookie teachers, most likely to be laid off and not rehired, even though they are passionate.

You can’t reform education without spending some money.

Liberals spend a whole lot of time trying to convince us they love teachers, but dig even skin deep into the matter, and it becomes evident that liberals hate teachers.

We should empower teachers to do their job by cutting wasteful spending and crippling bureaucracy, not classroom resources our educators and students need.

The good teachers are bailing out. Education is very important.... This should be the centerpiece on the table of Texas.

Ensuring all kids have access to an effective, talented teacher needs to be a national priority.