Spellings Quotes & Sayings

What we know is the workplace is more demanding than ever before. — Margaret Spellings

But the other notion is, we also believe that those folks closest on the ground that we're holding accountable for the results can decide, and ought to evaluate which programs get results. — Margaret Spellings

I mean, one thing I know about change is we are not going to close the achievement gap without educators. — Margaret Spellings

Again, the truth of the matter is we haven't paid that much attention to high school accountability. — Margaret Spellings

Today, in a world with instant access to Google, we rely on the electronic web to supply everything we need, from historical facts to word definitions and spellings as well as extended quotations. All of us who use a computer are aware of the shock of inner poverty that we suddenly feel when deprived (by a virus or other disaster) of our mental crutches even just for a day or a week. Plato is right: memory has been stripped from us, and all we possess is an external reminder of what we have lost, enabling us to pretend to a wisdom and an inner life we no longer possess in ourselves.13 — Stratford Caldecott

In the sixteenth century in England, dictionaries such as we would recognize today simply did not exist. If the language that so inspired Shakespeare had limits, if its words had definable origins, spellings, pronunciations, meanings - then no single book existed that established them, defined them, and set them down. — Simon Winchester

Well, one of them is annual assessment in grades 3-8. It's integral to the implementation of everything. — Margaret Spellings

I felt like there should have been rainbows and rose petals in their wake or something.
Ugh.That was catty.
Jenna deserved rainbows and rose petals, I reminded myself as I flopped back on my bed, Dad's book bumping painfully against my sternum. After everything she'd been through, Jenna had earned an eternity of nothing but good stuff. So why did seeing her with Vix make me want to brain myself with Demonologies: A History? I looked at the nightstand again and sighed. Then I opened the heavy book and tried to make myself read.
For the next few hours I made a valiant attempt to get through Chapter One.
For a book that was supposedly about fallen angels running around and creating havoc with their super-awesome dark "magycks," it was awfully boring, and all the weird spellings definitely didn't help. — Rachel Hawkins

And I believe that public broadcasting has an important trust with the American people, it's an intimate medium of television, and that we can do reading and language development for young children without getting into human sexuality. — Margaret Spellings

Do not be taken in by 'insiderisms.' Fledgling columnists, eager to impress readers with their grasp of journalistic jargon, are drawn to such arcane spellings as 'lede.' Where they lede, do not follow. — William Safire

Antananarivo is pronounced Tananarive, and for much of this century has been spelt that way as well. When the French took over Madagascar at the end of the last century (colonised is probably too kind a word for moving in on a country that was doing perfectly well for itself but which the French simply took a fancy to), they were impatient with the curious Malagasy habit of not bothering to pronounce the first and last syllables of place names. They decided, in their rational Gallic way, that if that was how the names were pronounced then they could damn well be spelt that way too. It would be rather as if someone had taken over England and told us that from now on we would be spelling Leicester 'Lester' and liking it. We might be forced to spell it that way, but we wouldn't like it, and neither did the Malagasy. As soon as they managed to divest themselves of French rule, in 1960, they promptly reinstated all the old spellings and just kept the cooking and the bureaucracy. — Douglas Adams

I do think we know that a teacher who knows what he or she is doing, knows their subject matter, and knows how to impart knowledge to kids is a critical piece of closing the achievement gap. — Margaret Spellings

We know that if we're going to remain economically competitive in the world, and viable as a civic democracy, that we're going to have to get more people educated to higher levels. — Margaret Spellings

I hate dialect. It gets in the way. If there is a need for dialect, you can render it quite easily by reproducing the rythm of that form of speech. Then you don't need to bother with silly spellings — Diana Wynne Jones

We all received invitations, made by hand from construction paper, with balloons containing our names in Magic Marker. Our amazement at being formally invited to a house we had only visited in our bathroom fantasies was so great that we had to compare one another's invitations before we believed it. It was thrilling to know that the Lisbon girls knew our names, that their delicate vocal cords had pronounced their syllables, and that they meant something in their lives. They had had to labor over proper spellings and to check our addresses in the phone book or by the metal numbers nailed to the trees. — Jeffrey Eugenides

There's lots of institutions and lots of different cultures, and so that's the kind of thing that parents need to be able to evaluate, and students themselves, when they make a selection. — Margaret Spellings

I think it'd be useful for parents to know kind of what is the culture of an institution. — Margaret Spellings

And I think that's righteous, I think that's what parents want to know. They want to know what's going right in the school, and what needs improvement, and that's what this law does. — Margaret Spellings

I think all kinds of parents are different in what they're seeking. — Margaret Spellings

If all you ever do is all you've ever done, then all you'll ever get is all you've ever got. — Margaret Spellings

Higher education is confronting challenges, like the economy is, about the need for a higher number of more adequately trained, more highly educated citizenry. — Margaret Spellings

It's a hard process to navigate ... to figure out where your kid ought to go to college. — Margaret Spellings

Don't let anyone else take the measure of your worth and capabilities.
Always stand proud in who you are! — Margaret Spellings

Speaking of names, a word to parents: Stop using alternate spellings for your kids. Aimee, Eryn, Bil, Derik. You're only costing jobs. The whole customized-coffee-mug and key-chain industry. An entire generation is being robbed of their roadside-Florida-souvenir heritage. "Daddy, why don't they ever have my name? I see something close, but it's spelled different." "Sorry, honey, we decided to be pricks. — Tim Dorsey

The long and short of it is, we need more rigor in all kinds of programs. — Margaret Spellings

And I think that we in America need to understand that many schools need improvement, and particularly with respect to how they're serving minority children. — Margaret Spellings

Lexical variety, eccentric constructions and punctuation, variant spellings, archaisms, the ability to pile clause on clause, the effortless incorporation of words from other languages: flexibility, and inclusiveness, is what makes English great; and diversity is what keeps it healthy and growing, exuberantly regenerating itself with rich new forms and usages. — Donna Tartt

We at the Department of Education are going to provide technical assistance; I've committed $14 million to show states how they might meet this more sophisticated approach. — Margaret Spellings

So for mackerel ("a well-known sea-fish, Scomber scombrus, much used for food") the second edition in 1989 listed nineteen alternative spellings. The unearthing of sources never ends, though, so the third edition revised entry in 2002 listed no fewer than thirty: maccarel, mackaral, mackarel, mackarell, mackerell, mackeril, mackreel, mackrel, mackrell, mackril, macquerel, macquerell, macrel, macrell, macrelle, macril, macrill, makarell, makcaral, makerel, makerell, makerelle, makral, makrall, makreill, makrel, makrell, makyrelle, maquerel, and maycril — James Gleick

My understanding is that Kansas, Massachusetts, they've been more pioneers on the special education side. — Margaret Spellings

Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries - eventually - reflect popular choices. — David Crystal

In Connecticut, my understanding, although I haven't seen the actual litigation, is that they want to measure every other year and not provide annual assessment as is required in the statute. — Margaret Spellings

For too long, actually, we have either said you're this or that. — Margaret Spellings

He obliterates things, she realized. He shatters them. They think they've won because he's a bit vague and he waffles, but that only goes so far. It's his shell, like a tortoise, if a tortoise was soft on the outside and dangerous on the inside. That's how the Time War ended: he got to the bottom of his patience, and he took two entire civilisations out of the universe and lock them away, and one of them was his own. That's how sharp his sense of obligation is.
And he lives like that. He does it all the time. — Nick Harkaway