** “Our educational problems of today have little to do with schools. The problem today is the demise of the family. In my family, there was no watching TV unless you had completed your homework. Although I was a good athlete, I could not play high school sports because I had to work part-time to pay for college and study for the grades to get into college. Today, almost half the kids born are to single parent families, and that parent is working. We have some excellent students in our schools today, and they come from traditional families. It was my job as a parent to teach my children, not a school system ….” ~ J. Crowley, subscriber
** “As you think about how to use your voice, your time, your energy, I want to pose one simple question to you: Does a child in South Korea deserve a better education than your child? If your answer is no–that no child in America deserves any less than a world-class education–then your work is cut out for you.” ~ Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education
** “Today, to compete for educational resources, Chinese schools do all they can to outperform other schools on student test scores. Schools keep students in classes for longer hours, assign large amounts of homework, and organize countless simulation examinations. Schools rank students by their test scores and rank teachers by the scores of their students… The pressure to outperform competitors exists at every level of the education system and is passed all the way down until it reaches the student. (Sound familiar?)” Xu Zhao, Harvard Graduate School of Education