I fully agree here with John Florez's statement of focus on education to shore up state's economy, if he means to shut down all public schools, sell off all the property and land's and get back to Home Schooling, other then just this, if he won't then he's just another socialist utopian liberal.

How many people have high-paying jobs? How many high-paying jobs are there?

If you teach children to type thirty words a minute and to be polite (good luck on that one) and not easily offended, and to retain a thousand items of minutae in their memories, they will survive, with overtime, as customer service representatives. There are lots of those jobs and they are in demand.

On the other hand, we could teach them at home to be self reliant, humble, and enterprising, to think "outside the box" and be honest and virtuous. They could also be taught to have excellent English, Math and Science skills. They could be taught to be practical and inventive and to fight for constitutional government.

Then they would develop their own businesses and industries and have a shot at being comfortably off.

Why can't we realize that the bank is dry, there is no more money? Yes, the scholarship is important, but WE DON'T HAVE ANY MORE MONEY! We can't keep living on credit as a society, and we can't get in the habit of living on credit as a government.

I agree the scholarship is important, but unless Mr. Florez can explain what should be cut instead to balance the budget, he doesn't have an argument in my opinion.

With our demographic we could lead the nation if not the world in educational outcomes. But as long as the legislature is in the hands of anti-intellectual Republican pinheads like Buttars and his ilk, we will continue to starve the school system and produce massive mediocrity. The Mormon people should be ashamed to be "a little better than average" in educational outcomes. Their belief in the doctrine that "the glory of God is intelligence" is simply lip service.

The problem is not the "republican pinheads" or the Mormons, it is the mediocrity of the public school system itself. Programs like Florez refers to are important, and education has be a high priority.
However,more money has never been linked to more success in education. We do quite well with the money and high percentage of school age children in this state. This state has one of the highest levels of education in the country.

Wrong. We do not do "quite well" in this state. We show up very poorly against the states of the Northeast and upper Midwest, all of which spend a great deal more than we do on education. You are hiding from the facts.

Utah does not do "quite well" in comparison to other states unless you take account: 1)we have a very high percentage of public school age children in the population and 2)we have limited funds in education in large part due to that fact.The fact is that the entire USA is doing relatively poorly in comparison to the world.

I'm not convinced that education should be the main focus for shoring up Utah's economy. We have many workers already who are underemployed. What's the point in having an educated workforce when the economy can't support them? Build the economy first and the workers will rise to fill the jobs, not the other way around. Workers need an incentive to qualify themselves for jobs that beckon.

Educational quality has deteriorated since I went to school. The math is at a lower level. Part of the problem as I see it is that Algebra I and Geometry are now mandated for all students. Legislators who made this a requirement no doubt didn't anticipate that in order to accomidate all students it would have to be dumbed down.

Consequently those student who who plan to go far in math, are getting a hollow shell of what used to be taught especially in Geometry. It used to be proof and problem solving based, now it is little more than the study of shapes and very simple problem solving.

It hasn't helped either that educators in the elementary schools have toyed around with the fad of lets not teach arithmetic, use calculators instead, and teach what they call geometry in elementary.

To teach a subject early, but to never teach it right is not good.

We have lost our way when it comes to math education. The entire nation has, the fact that Utah does good on standardized testing is not evidence we have not fallen.