More money is put into prisons than into schools. That, in itself, is the description of a nation bent on suicide. I mean, what is more precious to u….

Charity isn't a good substitute for justice..

There is something deeply hypocritical in a society that holds an inner-city child only eight years old "accountable" for her performance on a high-s….

Children sometimes understand things that most grown-ups do not see..

Separate and unequal didn't work 100 years ago. It will not work today..

Good teachers don't approach a child of this age with overzealousness or with destructive conscientiousness. They're not drill-masters in the militar….

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win..

Childhood is not merely basic training for utilitarian adulthood. It should have some claims upon our mercy, not for its future value to the economic….

Apartheid education, rarely mentioned in the press or openly confronted even among once-progressive educators, is alive and well and rapidly increasi….

So long as these kinds of inequalities persist, all of us who are given expensive educations have to live with the knowledge that our victories are c….

The first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is the function which we call - in….

Like grain in a time of famine, the immense resources which the nation does in fact possess go not to the child in the greatest need but to the child….

But what is now encompassed by the one word (“school”) are two very different kinds of institutions that, in function, finance and intention, serve e….

You have to remember. . .that for this little boy whom you have met, his life is just as important to him, as your life is to you. No matter how insu….

I have been criticized throughout the course of my career for placing too much faith in the reliability of children's narratives; but I have almost a….

I am opposed to the use of public funds for private education..

I emphasize teachers because they are largely left out of the debate. None of the bombastic reports that come from Washington and think tanks telling….

I write books to change the world. Perhaps I can only change one little piece of that world. But if I can empower teachers and good citizens to give ….

The ones I pity are the ones who never stick out their neck for something they believe, never know the taste of moral struggle, and never have the th….

Young children give us glimpses of some things that are eternal..

Hypersegregated inner-city schools - in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as ….