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Dear Fellow Vermonter,
If the United States is going to thrive in a competitive global economy, we need to have the best educated workforce in the world. What does that mean?
It means that we have to rethink the concept of public education. Fifty years ago, a high school degree was sufficient to allow a young person to go out into the world and earn a decent income. That is, by and large, not the case today. The new technology that has been developed in recent years now requires more than a high school education.
That is why, in my view, we should extend public education and make public colleges and universities tuition free. It also means that we should create apprenticeship programs so that young people have the option of getting the training they need to perform the good-paying jobs that are out there as we rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.
But even that is not enough. We are the wealthiest nation on Earth and we should have the best K-12 public school system in the world. Unfortunately, we don’t. International tests show American students lagging behind the young people of many other countries.
There are a number of reasons for that. But one of the most important factors is that we are not encouraging “the best and the brightest” into the teaching profession. In fact, in recent years teachers have received less and less respect from the public while the demands made on them have increased enormously. Teachers today are on the front lines in addressing the many problems facing our young people and their families – problems that have been greatly exacerbated by the pandemic.
In order to attract and maintain motivated and dedicated teachers we must, at the very least, pay them a salary commensurate with the vitally important work they do. That is why I have introduced the Pay Teachers Act which would provide a minimum salary of $60,000 a year to the teachers in our public schools.
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