47 States Grant Tenure To Teachers Regardless Of Performance

"Only four states require the consideration of any evidence of teacher performance as part of tenure decisions; the remaining 47 states permit districts to award tenure virtually automatically."

- National Council On Teacher Quality

The Most Important Factor In Student Achievement

"A growing body of evidence tells us that teacher effectiveness is the single most important factor in student achievement."

- Bill Gates

"We recruit a disproportionate share of teachers from among the bottom third of their college classes. Then we give them lifetime tenure after three years, and we reward them based on longevity, not performance."

- Mike Bloomberg

Absolutely Certain Education Fact

"Teachers matter more to student achievement, more than any other factor inside our school building. This is something we know absolutely for certain at this point."

- Melinda Gates

"We recruit a disproportionate share of teachers from among the bottom third of their college classes."

- Michael Bloomberg

99.8% Of Public School Students Are Taught By A Unhappy Teacher

"The chances your child will go through 12 years of schooling and never be forced to have his future crippled by a disheartened teacher are 0.2%."

- Greg Forster

Joel Klein On Public School Teachers

"In the United States, we draw teachers from the bottom quarter of our college graduates, and our kids in high-poverty neighborhoods get the bottom quarter of the bottom quarter."

- Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education

Teacher Quality Is Critical

"If two average 8-year-olds are assigned to different teachers, one who is strong and one who is weak, the children's lives can diverge in just a few years, according to research pioneered by Eric Hanushek at Stanford. The child with the effective teacher, the kind who ranks among the top 15% of all teachers, will be scoring well above grade level on standardized tests by the time she is 11. The other child will be a year and a half below grade level--and by then it will take a teacher who works with the child after school and on weekends to undo the compounded damage. In other words, the child will probably never catch up."

- Time Magazine

The Problem With Public School Teacher Pay

"There is no reason to excel when the best employees are paid what the worst are paid."

- Education Policy Institute

Teachers And Administrators Will Not Change Public Schools

Improving public schools requires change and public school teachers and administrators do not want the public schools to be changed. Therefore, efforts to improve public schools will have to be done without the support of teacher and administrator unions. Why don't teachers and administrators want the public schools to be changed? Because they are benefiting financially from the never ending increase in spending on public schools. Education reform will change who gets that money and those who are getting that money now do not want that to happen.

Teacher Unions Represent Teachers Not Students

"I'll start representing kids when kids start paying union dues."

Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers