Teach For America provides one of the most critical pipelines for bringing new talent into public education.

It's critical that states improve how teachers are trained, recruited, evaluated, compensated, advanced, and retained.

Managers are responsible for setting workplace policies under which teachers can succeed. Managers are responsible for negotiating contracts that create the conditions under which teachers can succeed.

I believe in two things: One, Andrew Carnegie said, 'He who dies with wealth dies in shame.' And someone once said, 'He who gives while he lives also knows where it goes.'

I've been religiously reading the O. Henry Prize anthologies every year since college, when I first began trying to write stories. Many of the authors whose work I cherish the most were people I first learned about through The O. Henry Prize Stories - and then I'd go search for their books.

Despotism is the only form of government which may with safety to itself, neglect the education of its infant poor.

I realized very young that I loved reading and wanted to do something related to books/reading for a living. I didn't think of publishing, really, until I was out of college.

After all, chamber of commerce type conservatives love nothing more than to opine on the great virtues of Texas. The low taxes, the low regulation, delightfully paired with a low investment in education, health care and really anything else that might be of use to their working-class citizens.