Mike Schmoker > Quotes

“Nostalgia is a seductive liar.”
― Mike Schmoker

“Things get done only if the data we gather can inform and inspire those in a position to make difference.”
― Mike Schmoker, Results: The Key to Continuous School Improvement

“Learning, without any opportunities to share what we've learned, is a little like cooking for ourselves; we do it, but we probably won't do it as well.”
― Mike Schmoker, Results: The Key to Continuous School Improvement

“What gets measured (and clearly defined) does get done.”
― Mike Schmoker

“When we unnecessarily elongate the process of "learning to read," we postpone "reading to learn" - learning itself - by years.”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

“The number of books students read...is among the best indicators of student reading development.”
― Mike Schmoker, Results: The Key to Continuous School Improvement

“worksheets - the archenemy of abundant, purposeful reading (and discussion and writing).”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

“Collaboration allows teachers to capture each other's fund of collective intelligence.”
― Mike Schmoker, Results: The Key to Continuous School Improvement

“In a research-poor context,isolated experience replaces professional knowledge as the dominant influence on how teachers teach.”
― Mike Schmoker

“We must begin where we are and move forward immediately by starting small and capitalizing on what's at hand.”
― Mike Schmoker, Results: The Key to Continuous School Improvement

“The research we do at the local level - collaboratively - is what makes formal, outside research work. Outside research cannot be installed like a car part - it has to be fitted, adjusted, and refined for the school contexts we workd in.”
― Mike Schmoker

“These programs and reading series are the fruit of an intellectually exhausted literacy industry that lost its way long ago, even as we mutely accepted its misguided agenda - to complicate reading and literacy so that we will purchase its programs and materials.”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

“I have found that educators yearn to be told something like this: There will be no more initiatives—at least for a time. Instead, we will focus only on what will have an immediate and dramatic impact on learning in your classrooms: ensuring the implementation of a common, content-rich curriculum; good lessons; and plenty of meaningful literacy activities (such as close reading, writing, and discussion) across the curriculum.”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

“simplicity is a benevolent but jealous taskmaster,”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning

“Clarity," writes Buckingham, "is the antidote to anxiety … if you do nothing else as a leader, be clear" (2005, p. 146).”
― Mike Schmoker, Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning