Teachers Needed For Arnie's Army

Everybody says our classes are to have top notch education system. Everybody but the Secretary of Education, Arnie Duncan, that is. He was recently speaking to the American Enterprise Institute about the realities of modern education in light of falling revenues and the need to change our perspectives.

A big drain on most school budgets is transportation cost. He hopes that administrators will rethink bus routes and closing down under enrolled schools instead of cutting direct services to students. He points out that while everybody is claiming to be so concerned with class size,US classes are actually smaller than many other countries, countries who's students are outscoring ours. The average class size in the US is 25 while in Japan and South Korea the average class size is in the mid-thirties.

Duncan feels it would be better to have an excellent teacher teaching a larger class than an "average" teacher in a class of 22. He thinks we ought to look at larger salaries say $80,000 to $120,000 for top-notch teachers. This approach would reward excellence and would make the most of dwindling resources.

Wow, what an "American" concept.