John Tierney: “If I can interject for a second, all of the business community in my area is very, very focused on having the product of…”

“If I can interject for a second, all of the business community in my area is very, very focused on having the product of our public school system and our private school systems get up to a level where they can hire these people and put them to work and do the fine-tune finish training for their particular product or service. But all of them expect that the school system, through the elementary and secondary level, is going to prepare these people either for a community college or college and/or work, so that they can come in and contribute and make us a productive society and make those businesses be able to perform. In my area of Massachusetts, which the gentleman also represents a part of, we are going to need millions of jobs in the next decade. Somebody has to fill them. All these jobs will require a lot more in terms of skill and education than we have known in the past, and businesses understand that. That is why they support the school-to-work program. That is why they generally get involved in each one of these local efforts to try to make sure these schools have higher standards and the students have the bar lifted for them to meet.”