Byron Dorgan: “I come from a school where I was involved in a graduating class of nine. I come from a county that has 3,000 people. The…”

“I come from a school where I was involved in a graduating class of nine. I come from a county that has 3,000 people. The community in which I grew up has 300 citizens. My high school class was a class of nine. That school district was educating the children in my school to go out into the workplace and to do things with the kind of background they gave us in a different time. And that school district still exists, and the school still exists. It is still a very small school. But now those children that are being educated in that school are going out into the marketplace in a different era. We are now involved in much different kinds of global competition in which we are competing against kids in Germany and Japan who are going to school 240 days a year. Our kids are going to school 180 days a year competing with respect to jobs and economic opportunity. And it is a much different world. That ought not suggest that we manage in any way our schools differently. The control and the authority and the payment for the schools ought to come from local government and local school districts and State governments.”