David Thomas: “I suppose we are all hopeful the committee will soon come together with their proposal and have some agreement on the…”

“I suppose we are all hopeful the committee will soon come together with their proposal and have some agreement on the bill and bring it here. As we think more and more about the education bill, and we begin to think what are the elements of a successful education for young people, of course we immediately begin to think, first of all, about families, about parents. That is the early responsibility. It is so interesting to watch in our communities, as we see the youngsters with parents who, when the children are very small, begin to help with reading, begin to give parental support. Then as they get to school, we can see their opportunities are much greater. The other things, of course, that we talk about are the facilities, the teaching opportunities that are provided by the community. We begin to try to put all these things together. Then we begin to say what is the role of dollars? I think the average expenditure per child is maybe $500. There are substantial differences in the costs of education throughout the country. Then we begin to measure reading performance against the amount of dollars that are spent. We see as dollars go up, reading capacity does not necessarily go up. So we say what is it that has to be done besides dollars? We begin to think of the role of the Federal Government versus the role of the school board and the State, in terms of decisions about school buildings, for example.…”