6+ Nicholas Lemann Quotes And Sayings

Following is our list of the best Nicholas Lemann quotes and sayings.

Profound question is how do you measure the non-skills component of what goes on in schools: values, curiosity, critical thinking, and so on. That's very tough. Maybe everything worthwhile can't be measured. — Nicholas Lemann

You can't create a successful politics of support for public education on the basis of asking voters not to care about skills, and tests that measure skills, at all. — Nicholas Lemann

I think serious research tends to be associated with higher academic quality, more prestige, more resources, and even, heaven help us, better teaching, to a greater extent than you might think. Folks who don't have an active intellectual life become, though the long years of just teaching, less intellectually alive and exciting. — Nicholas Lemann

I am always suspicious of the formulation that "politics" has prevented a great idea from being enacted by government. Politics IS government, in a democratic society. It's a challenge for school reformers, like reformers in any realm, to build a popular constituency for their work. If the people it's supposed to benefit vote against it, that tells me that the person pushing reform lacks political skill. And political skill is a good thing. — Nicholas Lemann

One of the most consistent findings about low performing schools and students is that "home variables" (parental income and education, etc.) are more predictive than "school variables." But, having said that, we as a society can have much more effect on the school variables than on the home variables, so it's important and valuable to focus on the question of which interventions in schools are most effective and which are least effective. — Nicholas Lemann

In journalism, especially, we tend to deal with large, complex systems by finding especially interesting people and story lines to focus on. — Nicholas Lemann