It didn't take very long for the Obama campaign to take video from the last night's Presidential Debate, twist it, and try to make it seem that Romney is against education. That's stupid (not that some people won't believe it).
What Romney said is that we don't need more teachers. He's right, we don't. We have more than enough. What we need are better teachers, particularly those unencumbered by union rules. Better teachers deserve better pay, not pay dictated by union contracts. We also need to be able to get rid of mediocre and bad teachers (hence getting rid of union encumbrances).
Education doesn't need even more money as we spend more per student in constant dollars than we ever have and test scores keep going down. We need to spend it more wisely. As the amount of educational spending has increased so has the administrative costs. The portion of education funds spent on actually educating out children hasn't risen nearly as much as those spent on 'administering' our schools. That's a problem.
Class size isn't nearly as much of a predictor of scholastic performance as is the quality of the teachers. (To show how ancient I am, I remember more than a few of my grammar school and junior high school classes having as many as 35 kids, with most around 30. It wasn't considered unusual and kids actually learned something.) Many of my teachers back then were a much better than a lot of BeezleBub's teachers when he was in middle and high school. The teachers I had had a better understanding of their chosen profession and subjects they taught.
Better Romney's version of education than Obama's and the NEA's.
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