** “Often ignored is the importance of the civic mission of schools–schools’ role in preparing students to be active and engaged citizens in their communities and the world. Our country’s founders viewed education as a cornerstone to our democracy and designed our government assuming an educated citizenry. Considering the current state of our democracy (with partisan politics resulting in policy gridlock), it is concerning that the civic mission of public schools is so neglected, particulary given the lack of civic knowledge of our youth (evidenced by their poor performance on the 2010 NAEP in civics)–and low civic engagement (for example, just 41.2% of youth–voters 18-24–turned out for the 2012 presidential election.)” ~ Anne O’Brien
** “Once you get above a majority of students in poverty, it becomes increasingly difficult to deal with the problems they’ve got, and increasingly those problems come to define the direction of the whole school.” ~ Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week
** “We can all agree on the importance of ensuring children have the foundation necessary to succeed in school and in life. However, before investing in new federal early childhood initiatives, we should first examine opportunities to improve existing programs designed to help our nation’s most vulnerable children, such as Head Start and the Child Care and Development Block Grant.”~ Representative John Kline (Minnesota)
** “It’s true that good preschools raise the math and reading scores of disadvantaged kids. The problem is that the gains are almost always temporary. Study after study of every kind of program since Head Start first came on line in the 1960s to recent state-wise programs in Georgia and Oklahoma has concluded that, with the lonely exception of third grade boys’ math scores in Tulsa, cognitive gains ‘fade out’ by third grade, probably because sub-par schools and an unsupportive environment at home were unable to help pre-K kids take advantage of those gains.” ~ Kay Hymowitz, Time Magazine