The long and short of it is, we need more rigor in all kinds of programs.

In Connecticut, my understanding, although I haven't seen the actual litigation, is that they want to measure every other year and not provide annual assessment as is required in the statute.

It's a hard process to navigate... to figure out where your kid ought to go to college.

And I think that we in America need to understand that many schools need improvement, and particularly with respect to how they're serving minority children.

We at the Department of Education are going to provide technical assistance; I've committed $14 million to show states how they might meet this more sophisticated approach.

Well, one of them is annual assessment in grades 3-8. It's integral to the implementation of everything.

We want to obviously foster a relationship that we're a partner with states; that we all share the same goals of closing the achievement gap, just as the Congress does; and that we're practical and sophisticated enough to understand what they're talking about.

But the other notion is, we also believe that those folks closest on the ground that we're holding accountable for the results can decide, and ought to evaluate which programs get results.

There's lots of institutions and lots of different cultures, and so that's the kind of thing that parents need to be able to evaluate, and students themselves, when they make a selection.

And I believe that public broadcasting has an important trust with the American people, it's an intimate medium of television, and that we can do reading and language development for young children without getting into human sexuality.

And I think that's righteous, I think that's what parents want to know. They want to know what's going right in the school, and what needs improvement, and that's what this law does.

I think it'd be useful for parents to know kind of what is the culture of an institution.

I mean, one thing I know about change is we are not going to close the achievement gap without educators.

I do think we know that a teacher who knows what he or she is doing, knows their subject matter, and knows how to impart knowledge to kids is a critical piece of closing the achievement gap.

Again, the truth of the matter is we haven't paid that much attention to high school accountability.

What we know is the workplace is more demanding than ever before.

My understanding is that Kansas, Massachusetts, they've been more pioneers on the special education side.

Higher education is confronting challenges, like the economy is, about the need for a higher number of more adequately trained, more highly educated citizenry.

The long and short of it is, we need more rigor in all kinds of programs.

We know that if we're going to remain economically competitive in the world, and viable as a civic democracy, that we're going to have to get more people educated to higher levels.

I think all kinds of parents are different in what they're seeking.

For too long, actually, we have either said you're this or that.

In America, I am brown; I'm 'of colour', so I would be offered Latin roles, and I've fought against that. I don't want to be put in a category, to be just offered the same sort of thing. For me, it's all about different roles, telling the stories of the great writers.

Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he knows, what he has personally thought about and experienced, and not merely to express with slightly different variations the opinion which has been inculcated in him.

Design is people.

My parents never understood why I didn't want to be a doctor or lawyer. They're Cuban immigrants who wanted to give their children the American dream, and, to them, that was more of what 'the dream' entailed.

I remember the first time I was booked into a jazz club. I was scared to death. I'm not a jazz artist. So I got to the club and spotted this big poster saying, 'Richie Havens, folk jazz artist.' Then I'd go to a rock club and I'm billed as a 'folk rock performer' and in the blues clubs I'd be a 'folk blues entertainer.'

When I was not connected with someone, I didn't get asked out that often.

People think I'm goofy. I don't have that Angelina Jolie air to me. I wish that I did, and that's an insecurity of mine.

I would rather listen to plays in the car than read them.

Treating an age group as a demographic requires coming up with something that's common to every single one of them. Right?... So it's reductionist in that it reduces an entire segment of civilization down to one person with one habit.

I'm trying to work on my modelling career and remove myself from the whole FHM stigma.

I start work at 5 in the morning and I have a wicked insomnia problem.

The more you hesitate in a game, the more your chance of getting hit. Your focus isn't there. When you hesitate, usually you're in trouble.

When you make content, you try things, and they don't always work. You learn from it and figure out what's next.

Philosophers can debate the meaning of life, but you need a Lord who can declare the meaning of life.

Fitness is not about being better than someone else. Its about being better than you used to be.

The French revolution he concluded had not produced any new principles of truths merely a mass of examples of how things could go wrong.

I'm actually very active.

To return after long years of painful absence to some place which has been the scene of our former joys, and whence the force of circumstance, and not choice, has driven us, is oppressive to the heart.

Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are.

What are called 'public schools' in many of America's wealthy communities aren't really 'public' at all. In effect, they're private schools, whose tuition is hidden away in the purchase price of upscale homes there, and in the corresponding property taxes.

I'm hoping one day to open my own shelter. I would be the person with the three-legged dog. I just love animals more than people; I really do.

Billboard called my solo album, 'Standing In The Spotlight,' a great party album and even said that my raps put the Beastie Boys to shame.

Children run wildly, breathlessly... facing the wind...absorbing its speed.

If the campaign is about issues, we will win.