Political Quotes

“I am proud to join Senator Alexander in introducing this legislation authorizing Teach for America to recruit, select, train, and support its national teacher corps in underserved communities. This bill comes at a crucial time. Federal law now requires more from our teachers, yet we have dwindling resources to draw from. Many local education agencies are finding themselves having to supplement their teacher corps. Clark County, NV, is the fifth largest school district in the Nation--in the fastest growing State. As one can only imagine, the influx of new residents has an incredible impact on our public works, especially our schools. Clark County's outgoing superintendent told me that the district spends close to $1 million annually for teacher recruitment efforts across the country. Clark County School District has made great strides in its commitment to reversing the trend of sagging high school graduation rates and college attendance by hiring nearly 2,000 new teachers a year to fill its classrooms. But, last year, the school district did something that several other urban and rural districts around the country did: they partnered with Teach for America in order to augment their qualified teaching staffs. Founded by Wendy Kopp, who conceived the idea for the program in her senior thesis at Princeton, Teach for America recruits some of the Nation's best college graduates to become teachers in low-performing urban or rural school districts for 2 years.…”