Patty Murray: “In fact, we know there is going to be a teacher shortage. We need to make sure young people want to go into a career in…”

“In fact, we know there is going to be a teacher shortage. We need to make sure young people want to go into a career in education. If we are going to tell them they are going to be in a large class, in a crumbling school, and will not have the support at all levels--local, State, and Federal--we are going to have a hard time recruiting those teachers we drastically need. We do know if we tell our young people that we are going to reduce their class sizes so they can really do the professional job we have asked them to do, and we have a commitment that we are not going to renege on every year, that we believe in this, I believe we will be able to recruit young, great students into the teaching profession, and I think we have a lot of work to do on that. Certainly this is a commitment we need to make.”