Adam Smith: “of the many challenges that our country faces in this new century, there is none greater than education, educating our…”

“of the many challenges that our country faces in this new century, there is none greater than education, educating our populace so that we have a skilled workforce and so that everybody has the level of education that they need in today's economy. When I go around my district and go visit businesses and it does not matter what size or what level of skill they are looking for and I ask them what their greatest challenge is, the answer is always the same, finding employees. This is particularly true certainly of high-skilled jobs, computer, engineers, math, science, but it is also true across the board of just about any level of job that you could need in any business. We are not educating our population to fill the jobs that are available in our country. If we are going to maintain the economic growth that we have enjoyed for the last 7 or 8 years, we are going to have to start doing that. Increasingly, the battle over education has broken down into an either/or partisan debate that is not benefiting either party or certainly not benefiting the people of this country.”