Elijah Cummings: “It is important that we do pay our teachers wages that are reasonable and that they can live off of. There was just an…”

“It is important that we do pay our teachers wages that are reasonable and that they can live off of. There was just an article in the paper in Baltimore that stated that as we move towards September, the September opening of school, we have a teacher shortage and we are doing everything in our power to find teachers. But one of the things that is for sure, we have got to pay them. We have got to pay them well. I want to go back to something you said about conditions of teaching. I was talking to some friends of mine who teach in private school. The interesting thing to note is that these folks were actually making a little less than they would make in public school. I said to them, why did you make that change? They said, because of the conditions. They were able to teach smaller classes. Their hearts are into making sure that every child succeeds, that no child is left behind, and they felt that the conditions, if it got to 34 or 35 kids in a class that trying to teach it was very, very difficult, not that they did not want to do a good job but it was very hard to be effective.”