We've lost our competitive spirit. We've become so obsessed with making kids feel good about themselves that we've lost sight of building the skills they need to actually be good at things.

Standardized tests are an indicator of the kind of service taxpayers are receiving - and whether schools, educators and policymakers are doing their jobs. In the United States, taxpayers spend almost $600 billion annually on public education, so it's not unreasonable to ask what all that money is producing. In fact, it's irresponsible not to know.

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.

If a country puts its entire focus on making sure that the education system improves, then that's the kind of progress that you can see.

My parents came from an environment where everyone knew that the way to be successful was to get a great education, and that was going to be your ticket in life. If you could succeed in education then you would succeed in life, so that was sort of the driving force behind my parents' upbringing, and therefore kind of how they brought me up.

We all have to have more rigorous expectations of our kids in America.

I think that one thing that people are missing is that we are never going to be able to fix this country's [American] economy in the long run until we fix our public education system.

We are always going to put the best interests of kids above the rights, privileges and priorities of adults.

In schools where parent involvement is greater, you do have higher achievement levels and better functioning, better performing schools.

I'd rather deal with anger than apathy.

I think people don't talk enough about education and what we need to do in our public education system.

An education reformer is as important in America as the first lady.