WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Duncan's Race to the Top bus

Michael Winerip

In August 2010, Mr. Duncan visited the state union’s headquarters in his Race to the Top bus (he really has one) and told union and department officials that New York had won a grant “because of your collective leadership, your act of courage.” -- NYT, "In Race to the Top, the Dirty Work Is Left to Those on the Bottom."

New York Gov. Cuomo

"If we don't do this, we lose the Race to the Top money, so the equation is simple at the end of the day," Mr. Cuomo told a packed auditorium near the state Capitol here. "No evaluation, no money, period." -- Wall St. Journal

Calif. Gov. Brown

"Second-graders take five days of tests. That's longer than I spent on the bar exam." -- L.A. Times

Valerie Strauss

Really, Ms. Rhee, how can a formula ever accurately factor in the impact of a sleepless night in a homeless shelter on a hungry student’s performance on a high-stakes test? Did you know that 22 percent of American children live in poverty and that low test scores are always correlated with family income? -- WaPo, "Dear Michelle Rhee: About that teacher evaluation study"

Charles Blow

But many Republicans are willing to forgive his [Gingrich's] flaws and his past because he connects with a silent slice of their core convictions — their deep-seated, long-simmering issues with an “elite” media bias, minority “privilege” and Obama’s “otherness.” -- NYT, "Newt's Southern Strategy"

Ericka Hoffman, 26, a junior at Cal State-Bakersfield

“People in positions of power, I think they believe nothing is going to happen,” she said. “We’re just going to yell and scream and hold up signs and nothing’s going to change. But you’ve got an entire generation of people that realize something is wrong and something has to change because the system is wrong. There’s more of us than there are of them.” -- The New Student Activism, NYT