Kay Bailey Hutchison: “this amendment adds flexibility to our school systems. I am working with Senator Jeffords and his committee, and Senator…”

“this amendment adds flexibility to our school systems. I am working with Senator Jeffords and his committee, and Senator Leahy as well, on the ESEA reauthorization. I wish to lay down the marker with this amendment because I think it is the key to what we are talking about. We are trying to give parents more options for their children to make the choices that are best for each child. One of the problems we have in high-needs schools across our country is that we do not have qualified teachers to teach subjects that will benefit young people all over our country. It may be computer courses. It may be language courses. Yet we have people who have had careers-- people in the military, people in corporations and businesses--who may be proficient in French and they may live in an area where the school is not able to teach French because they do not have a qualified teacher. This would be a big benefit to the young people in that school system if they had that as an option. It may be the Russian language or the Chinese language. It may be computer skills. It may be chemistry or biology classes. There are so many areas, but they just are not teacher qualified. My bill, which is called Careers to Classrooms, is being offered as an amendment to give more flexibility to the States by allowing them to go to a high-needs school and give priority in that high-needs school to recruiting teachers.”