Academic Preparedness Quotes

If you have a kid who goes to kindergarten and doesn't know what a circle is, doesn't know what red and green are, and doesn't know what right and left are, by the time he learns those things, the rest of the class is far ahead of him.

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.

I am a professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University, where I teach an introductory class in cosmology. I see the deficiencies that first-year students show up with.

One thing is for sure: most of the people admitting candidates to universities for technical subjects are pretty dissatisfied with the level of math education.

[Presently, science undergraduates] do not learn to write clearly and briefly, marshalling their points in due and aesthetically satisfying order, and eliminating inessentials. They are inept at those turns of phrase or happy analogy which throw a flying bridge across a chasm of misunderstanding and make contact between mind and mind.

When a child shows up for school, and is not physically and mentally ready to learn, he or she never catches up.

Our kids should be leaving school ready for success, not paying for the misconduct of predatory institutions.

The trouble is not chiefly that our universities are unfit for students but that many present-day students are unfit for universities.

Within a single school, teachers often encounter differences in poverty levels, parent involvement, and student readiness.

Showing up at school already able to read is like showing up at the undertaker's already embalmed: people start worrying about being put out of their jobs.

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.

There's no question that my son is better prepared for college than I was. He manages his time better, is more efficient and more directed, and spends less time in lines and more time doing exactly what he sets out to do.

African American children can't be educationally disadvantaged for 12 years and then experience a miracle cure when it comes time for admission into college.

The thing that's depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they've never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference between 'lie' and 'lay,' let alone 'its' and 'it's.' And they're in graduate school!

Too often we act - ask our schools to be truant officers, our teachers to be truant officers, because we're giving them children who have, you know, they're not ready to learn. And if they're not ready to learn by the third grade, they know they're behind.

I was the kid who'd get up in class and tell the teacher, 'But we were supposed to have a test today! I studied for it!'

The building blocks of mathematical thinking are requisite for more advanced conceptualization. If a student is not ready to move on, then the teacher must take time to assist that learner.

We have this mistaken notion that everybody in the world has to go to college. The colleges are already crowded with people who never in this world will absorb more than a rudimentary education, and we dilute everything to meet this low standard.