Top Dana Goldstein Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Dana Goldstein Biography

Dana Goldstein is an American journalist and the author of The Teacher Wars, published by Doubleday and a New York Times best seller. She has worked as a staff writer at The Marshall Project and as an associate editor at The Daily Beast. She received a Bernard L. Schwartz fellowship from the New America Foundation, a Spencer Foundation Fellowship in Education Journalism from Columbia University, and a Puffin Fellowship from The Nation Institute. Her work on politics, education, and women's issues has appeared in national publications including The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, and Politico.

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Dana Goldstein Quotes

Younger teachers are definitely more likely to have worked at charter schools as opposed to have just heard of them. Charter schools explicitly look, often, to hire younger people.

Charter, Definitely, Opposed, People, School, Teacher

This is something that Randi Weingarten said to me when I interviewed her once, which I think I quote in chapter nine. She talks about how only 7 percent of private sector workers in the American economy are in unions. So all the protections that teachers have that are due to collective bargaining - including generous pensions, generous health plans, limits to what they can be asked to do after school and in the summers - all of those things are sources of resentment to the public. And I think that politicians have played off of that quite effectively.

Chapter, Limits, School, Sector, Summer, Teacher

If you look at the early nineteenth century you see the idea that we educate children to be voters and to be participants in our popular democracy. And then at the turn of the century when more and more immigrants are coming into the schools, Americanization becomes a more explicit part of the agenda.

Becomes, Children, Idea, Ideas, Nineteenth, School

A lot of charter schools are non-union schools that take a lot of teachers from alternative tracks, like Teach For America. They do this in part because a lot of charter schools have very strong ideologies around how they want teachers to teach. And they find that starting with a younger or more inexperienced teacher allows them to more effectively inculcate those ideas.

Inculcate, School, Strong, Take, Teacher, Teachers

The idea that because the school day is shorter or the school year is shorter than the sort of white collar workday or work year, that does not actually capture how teachers spend their time.

School, Teacher, White, Work, Year, Years

There are a lot of polls that show that actually Americans have a pretty high opinion of teachers, that Americans think teachers are just about as prestigious as doctors. And yet there's this political conversation - this reform conversation - that paints a very negative picture of the effectiveness of the teaching population. So there's definitely a tension between the way teaching is talked about and understood at the political level and how everyday average Americans think about teachers.

Actually, Everyday, Teacher, Teaching, Tension, Thinking

I don't think school reform should be motivated by missionary zeal. I think it should be motivated by evidence of what works. I have been critical of Teach For America in the past but I think one of the things about their model that's interesting is that they're constantly looking at it and whether what they're doing works and reassessing their model, and making changes. So to the extent that I believe everyone in the education sector should be looking at evidence, reassessing, making tweaks to figure out what works, I think it's a positive model.

Believe, Motivated, Past, Reform, School, Teach

I wrote a work of history, I looked at over 500 sources - I spent three-and-a-half years on the project. I think the most gratifying and wonderful thing about the reaction is that people are learning things from the history that feel relevant to today.

Looked, People, Thinking, Today, Work

Just to deliver one high-quality 45 minute lesson requires many hours of planning in advance.

Advance, Lessons, Minute, Planning, Quality, Requires

What happens from about 1954 to the late 1980s, is that we see a huge wave of optimism that school desegregation is going to be the way to improve educational outcomes for poor children of color. And we see a consensus build on the left and in the center that this is going to be a transformative education movement like none other we've seen in American history.

Children, Educational, Improve, Poor, School, See

If you're afraid to talk to the other adults in your school it is definitely throughout history the hallmark of a failing school. When I was writing about the teachers' strike in New York City in 1968, the middle school where events triggered that strike was a place where teachers were known to hide in their classrooms.

Classrooms, History, School, Teacher, Teachers, Writing

We have a lot of rhetoric today about "high rigor" and you often hear terms like that thrown about when discussing the Common Core. But the American education system historically has not embraced intellectual seriousness.

Common, Discussing, Embraced, Intellectual, Like, Today

Just in general, when we look at our school system, there is so much overlap with our criminal justice system in terms of our low-income youth.

Justice, Overlap, School, Terms, Youth

Teaching is been seen as kind of a moral calling and not as an intellectual job.

Intellectual, Kind, Moral, Seen, Teaching

Coming to the civil rights movement in the twentieth century, we begin to have this idea that's still with us today, which is that the main purpose of public education is closing achievement gaps.

Achievement, Century, Public, Purpose, Today

There are a lot of polls that show that actually Americans have a pretty high opinion of teachers, that Americans think teachers are just about as prestigious as doctors.

Doctors, High, Opinion, Teacher, Think, Thinking

The question is rarely asked, "Why is it that so few other Americans have these protections?" The question is more often asked, "Why do teachers have it so easy?"

Asked, Easy, Protection, Protections, Teacher

I don't think school reform should be motivated by missionary zeal. I think it should be motivated by evidence of what works.

Missionary Zeal, School, Think, Thinking, Zeal

In North Carolina, for example, it takes 15 years to move a teacher's salary from $30,000 to $40,000. So it's really difficult to argue that pay doesn't have something to do with the lack of prestige.

40000, Arguing, Lack, Moving, Pay, Prestige

There's a small movement of teacher-led schools across the country. These are schools that don't have a traditional principal, teachers come together and actually run the school themselves. That's kind of the most radical way, but I think something that's more doable across the board is just creating career ladders for teachers that allow certain teachers after a certain number of years to inhabit new roles. Roles mentoring their peers, helping train novice teachers to be better at their jobs, roles writing the curriculum, leading on lesson planning.

Allow, Country, Inhabit, Number, Running, Teacher

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