Byron Dorgan: “I asked the question at that point during the discussion whether the product from the Appropriations Committee that was…”

“I asked the question at that point during the discussion whether the product from the Appropriations Committee that was brought to the committee yesterday, and now to the floor, would, in fact, require or allow or cause the firing of up to 30,000 teachers that had been previously hired under this program. I asked the question, I think, a couple of times, trying to understand, is there a deliberate effort to say we don't want to have a program with national goals or aspirations to reduce class size by hiring more teachers; we don't want to have that program. Is that the goal, to not have that program any longer? I was not able to get an answer to that. But we now have the program. Is it not correct we have a program in which we in Congress said we will authorize and fund to try to reduce class size around this country in our public schools by adding some additional classroom teachers? We know that works. Study after study tells us that works, that it improves education. A teacher in a classroom with 30 students has substantially less time to devote to those students than a teacher in a classroom with 15. We know that. We know it works in every way to have smaller class sizes. This Government already decided it wanted to have a program of that type. We funded it and authorized it last year.”