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Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein Quotes

Journalist

Dana Goldstein is an American journalist and author specializing in education, social policy, and public affairs. She writes for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other major outlets, known for her in-depth reporting on education issues. Her book 'The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession' explores the evolution and controversies of teaching in the U.S. Goldstein's work focuses on educational inequality, teacher policy, and school reform, aiming to illuminate complex issues in the education system. She resides in Brooklyn, New York, continuing her writing and reporting.

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Famous Dana Goldstein Quotes

“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.”

Years Doe Ideas School White Teacher Capture Collars White Collar School Days School Years

Author:Dana Goldstein

“[Nineteenth century American educator] Catharine Beecher is really associated with the idea that a mother works with children in the home and a teacher works with children at school, and that therefore women are almost biologically predisposed to do this job.”

Children Ideas Home School Jobs Mother Teacher Century Educator Nineteenth Century

Author:Dana Goldstein

“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.”

People Looks School Teacher Heard Charter Charter Schools

Author:Dana Goldstein

“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.”

Ifs Looks Children Ideas School Turns Democracy Century Immigrants Agendas Voters Educate Nineteenth Century Participants Explicit

Author:Dana Goldstein

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

Thinking Should School Evidence Reform Motivated Missionary Zeal Missionary Zeal

Author:Dana Goldstein

“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.”

Thinking School Economy Teacher Politician Summer Protection Generous Resentment Pension After School

Author:Dana Goldstein

“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. I've even talked to people who didn't necessarily go into teaching thinking they wanted to work at a charter school or even may have been considered critics of the charter school movement, and found that it was the only way for them to get their foot in the door. So young people just have much more familiarity with the concept.”

People Thinking School Teacher Teaching Critics Familiarity Charter

Author:Dana Goldstein

“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.”

School Strong Teach Teacher Track Ideology Very Strong Charter

Author:Dana Goldstein

“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 School Poor Optimism Wave Educational American History Consensus

Author:Dana Goldstein

“The persistence of housing discrimination and housing segregation makes it difficult at times to integrate schools. So what flows from that is disappointment and cynicism and the search for what's next. And it's really in the search for what's next after that that we come upon ideas like increasing standardized testing for kids and using those tests scores to hold teachers accountable.”

Kids School Difficult Teacher Disappointment Discrimination Persistence Cynicism Segregation Integrating

Author:Dana Goldstein

“The first generation of school reformers I talk about - nineteenth century education reformer Horace Mann, Catharine Beecher - they are true believers in their vision for public education. They have a missionary zeal. And this to me connects them a lot to folks today, whether it's education activist Campbell Brown or former D.C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. It's a righteous sense, a reform push that's driven by a strong belief in a particular set of solutions.”

Today School Belief Strong Vision Solutions Driven Believer Activist Missionary Righteous Public School Zeal Public Education True Believer

Author:Dana Goldstein

“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.”

Thinking Believe School Past I Believe Interesting Teach Evidence Motivated Missionary Making Changes Zeal Tweak

Author:Dana Goldstein

“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.”

Thinking Writing Kind Country Helping Running School Together Teacher Train Planning Radical Mentoring

Author:Dana Goldstein

“I think any sort of system that gives teachers more opportunities like teacher-led schools is a positive one that's going to lead to better retention in the profession, and it's going to be more intellectually challenging, so teachers stay engaged with their work over the many years of their career.”

Thinking Giving School Opportunity Challenges Teacher Profession

Author:Dana Goldstein

“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.”

Writing School Teacher Failing Classroom Hallmark Middle School

Author:Dana Goldstein

“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.”

School Term Justice Youth Justice System Criminal Justice

Author:Dana Goldstein

About the Author

Known for: Journalist
Quotes: 34

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