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Show Sen. Moss Challenges Colleagues to Match Words, Action Senator Frank E. Moss CD-Utah) CD-Utah) Friday challenged his colleagues in Congress to match their fine words on the value of education with deeds. In a brief speech to the Senate he described the record of this 87th Congress on education "a shameful one." He said: "This week nearly 40 million young people returned to the classrooms of our public schools to find in far too many instances in-stances conditions worse than when they left last June. Many will meet new teachers for the first time. And far too many of these teachers, nearly 100,000 according to the U.S. Office of Education, will be professionally unqualified for the solemn responsibility re-sponsibility which they have. An estimated ten million of these children will be in overcrowded classrooms, many in actually unsafe buildings." Senator Moss lauded his State of Utah for the financial effort it exerts on behalf of education, saying: "Utah ranks very high fourth in the nation in the number of fully qualified teachers, teach-ers, with 95.8 per cent of all its teachers holding at least the bachelor's degree. Of this we are justifiably proud. We are not proud of the fact that we rank 29th in teachers' salaries $500 below the national average and nearly $2,000 below the highest rate. In addition we rank 44th in per cent of increases in teach- ers salaries, having raised them only 2.2 per cent last year as compared with a national average aver-age increase of nearly five per cent. This indicates that Utah has reached its limit of resources for instructional costs. "Before you say that Utah should solve this situation for itself, it-self, consider these facts: Utah ranks first in the nation in per cent of personal income devoted to public elementary and secondary secon-dary schools. Our citizens in Utah invest, on the average, $5.50 of every $100 of personal income in public education. The national average is only $3.70 per $100." And he said: "It is unfair and unjust for the people of states such as Utah to be forced to bear such an inequitable in-equitable share of the cost of educating the future citizens of this nation. The appropriatcfTje of the Federal tax gathering machinery ma-chinery for education is the only answer for the alleviation of such unreasonable equities." |