Timothy Roemer: “at a time over the last few days when we have listened to such prominent leaders in our business community like Bill…”

“at a time over the last few days when we have listened to such prominent leaders in our business community like Bill Gates at Microsoft and Andrew Groves at Intel and Carly Feorina at Hewlett-Packard say that we need to do more in terms of quality in education, we need to do more in terms of new ideas, we need to do more in terms of technology, we need to do more in terms of training our teachers to learn how to use the technology. This bill does less. At a time when we are facing a new economy with new challenges in the digital divide with some of our students, if they are black or Hispanic, not having equal access with this digital divide to the latest technology, we are doing less at a time when, according to the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, schools are turning to temp agencies for substitute teachers, and it quotes the Kelly Services going out into the community to put substitute teachers into our schools. Now, I think the quality of teaching is the single biggest need in this country because we will need 2 million new teachers, but we have to make sure the current teachers can teach with the challenges of the technology that are before them. Temp agencies might be able to do some good things, but I am not sure that one of their strengths is putting qualified teachers in our schools.”