One way to help children is to reduce class size. Our Class Size Reduction Initiative has already put some 29,000 more teachers into the nation's classrooms. Again, the majority in Congress is blocking our efforts to help your schools further reduce class size, and that's wrong. We must continue our fight to reduce class size. Smaller class size has proven to be so important in the early grades because that is when children are learning to read.
Small classes give teachers the opportunity to provide individual attention to their students.
And that's the right thing to do. And we in America, including each of you, face a teacher challenge. We need 2.2 million new teachers over the next 10 years. We have a particular need for math and science teachers. Dennis Van Roekel is serving on the commission chaired by John Glenn to make recommendations on how to best teach math and science and how to attract enough qualified people to the profession.