It comes down to what your priorities are, and if public education is about kids, then every decision we make should be focused on the question of 'Is this good for a child?' And that should be the driving focus and the priority when we decide what our policies should be and what our laws should be.
Campbell Brown
If Boston charters can be stymied despite their extraordinary success, charters anywhere can be stopped.
Charter opponents often try to delegitimize strong testing results like those in Boston by attributing them to excessive test prep - as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio did recently.
After a 15-year career in television news, sometimes spent biting my tongue in the name of objectivity and balance, I retired to raise our two small children.
Perhaps there is no greater evidence that the teachers' union has swung too far out of the mainstream that they both have been a target of near-constant criticism from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
'Morning Joe' host Mika Brzezinski's personal life is a minefield. Her father is Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and while one brother is an Obama appointee, the other advises Romney.
TV news has largely given Trump editorial control.
Sometimes, in the midst of a tragedy like the Newton massacre, we witness incredible acts of valor, tenderness, grace, and decency. We saw it from Sandy Hook Elementary School's teachers, students, and parents, as well as from their community and country. The outpouring of sympathy and help has been touching and, at times, inspiring.
Someone once told me I looked good in red, so I bought every piece of clothing in red and bright-red lipstick. I had huge hair, as big as I could tease it and spray it.
When you have Candidate A saying the sky is blue, and Candidate B saying it's a cloudy day, I look outside and I see, well, it's a cloudy day. I should be able to tell my viewers, 'Candidate A is wrong, Candidate B is right,' and not have to say, 'Well, you decide.' Then it would be like I'm an idiot.
Let's be clear about what Common Core is. It spells out what students should know at the end of each grade. The goal is to ensure that our students are sound in math and literacy and that our schools have some basic consistency nationwide. But the standards do not dictate a national curriculum, and teachers are not told how or what to teach.
I don't know if a government bailout will rescue America's auto industry, but I do know that if there is a bailout, it better come with a big, bright stop sign and lots of strings attached.
When Wolf Blitzer wears a not-so-great tie, how much e-mail do you think he gets? My point is, for women, unfortunately, appearance is part of the job.
I'm a mom, and my view of public education begins and ends with the fundamental question: Is this good for children?
We are not yet a society free of sexism, and this will continue to be an issue for all women candidates.
It's the way tenure works, together with dismissal protections that tenured teachers have, that no other public employee has, which makes it almost impossible to remove a grossly ineffective and incompetent teacher or, in some cases, even an abusive teacher.
Most of Planned Parenthood's work focuses on health care for low-income women: things like screenings for breast cancer and diabetes, and family planning.
In a situation where it's the child or the adult, I'm going with the child.
You're never going to hear me say, 'Well, I've been critical of Obama five times, so now I need to be critical of McCain five times.' That is a false equivalence, and that's what I think is wrong with journalism.
There's no reason why anyone's job should become untouchable for the rest of their life.
I don't think it's fair that we cannot guarantee every child in this country a great education and that, in New York City, in some cases, your child is at risk in some part because of the policies the union endorses.
Education has not traditionally been a large concern in presidential elections, presumably because the president does not run schools.
People say, 'Are you going to be beating up one side or the other side?' It's everybody. It's the entire education establishment that is in power.
Whenever someone says to me, 'Are you for or against Common Core,' the first question I ask is, 'What do you think Common Core is?' You will get a different answer from every single person. You will literally get a different answer.
To some people, Common Core means what it actually is, which is a set of standards. That's not necessarily most people. To other people, Common Core is a new curriculum that's been implemented at their school that they don't understand. It's applying new teaching tools.
Gay marriage passed in New York because four Republican legislators crossed party lines. They did it in part because they had true bipartisan financial support.
I know people talk about poverty and other factors, but there is very little I can do to ensure that a child has a stable two-parent home. But what if we can give them a shot in the classroom with a stable, high-standards environment?
What is happening with automation and globalization, that's not going away.
I'm pretty sure the last time any anchor could honestly ignore ratings was well before I was born.
It has seemed, at times, like American carmakers think car buyers are so blindly loyal that they will keep coming back - despite the sticker shock - for crummy cars that guzzle gas, fall apart too soon, and cost too much to repair.
I have been fortunate that publications like the 'New York Times' and 'The Wall Street Journal' have allowed me to share some of my opinions with a wider audience.
While the rest of the cable news world moved to opinion, CNN allowed me to stay true to my hard-news roots and supported me with a true commitment to old-school journalism.
The president has been more than willing to challenge the National Rifle Association, but that is like a Republican president standing up to labor unions - not a move that risks anything with his core supporters. Mr. Obama could show some real bravery by taking on Hollywood.
I've covered the White House and been yelled at by presidents.
Mr. Obama is particularly well positioned to challenge Hollywood because of his special relationship with the media world's elites. They might be more likely to heed criticism coming from Mr. Obama than from any other president or member of Congress.
You're not going to see me ever be partisan. I'll never take a position on a candidate or an issue.
I'm interested in full disclosure for people who give money to politicians. But I'm not a politician. I'm an advocate.
My mom was very much the product of a very paternalistic, deep-southern culture, but also a repressed feminist. Her way of being defiant was to raise us to be rebellious ourselves - basically, the opposite of who she had to be in her own life.
My second-grade teacher went around the class and asked everybody what they were going to be when they grew up. I said, 'I want to travel the world,' and he said, 'You'll be married and pregnant by 21, just like all the girls in this room.'
My friends in the TV news business are in a state of despair about Donald Trump, even as their bosses in the boardroom are giddy over what he's doing for their once sagging ratings.
Trump doesn't force the networks to show his rallies live rather than do real reporting. Nor does he force anyone to accept his phone calls rather than demand that he do a face-to-face interview that would be a greater risk for him.
It's understood in the newsroom: Air the Trump rallies live and uninterrupted. He may say something crazy; he often does, and it's always great television.
Experience is a legitimate issue when John McCain raises it about Obama, and it's also legitimate for us to raise it about Palin.
I was not so interested in night-after-night coverage of Michael Jackson's death or Britney Spears' latest breakdown - topics that were 'breaking news' at the time.
This must be such a relief for the TV executives managing a business in decline, suffering from a thousand cuts from social media and other new platforms. Trump arrived on the scene as a kind of manna from hell.
The 800-pound gorillas of TV news are gone. When I was the White House correspondent at NBC, and Tom Brokaw was anchor, the reporters were protected.
Early on, even before he was the front-runner, TV news was giving Trump far more attention than other candidates and far more than he deserved.
As the ratings go up, so does advertising revenue.
Any time you challenge a big powerful person or special interest, there's going to be blowback.
Lester is the Rock of Gibraltar. Nothing can rattle him. I am not. I was always flying off the handle about things. And the one person who could calm me down and make me realize that none of this silliness mattered was Lester Holt.
