Even [within] those schools that accept associate's degrees for a teaching position, they typically place greater value as far as compensation formulas on educational experience than they do on work experience. A guy with 30 years of experience as a technician and an associate's degree might not be given pay equal to someone with a bachelor's degree who [has] no technical experience.

Much of education is out of touch with the value of practical experience compared to academic experience when it comes to technical trainer positions. When I spoke to ASE about this, I used our newsletter as an example. It had seven ads in it for automotive faculty and six out of the seven required at least a bachelor's degree. In reality, when it comes to automotive degrees, an associate's degree is pretty much the routine degree that technicians would secure.

There are hardly any schools giving four-year bachelor's degrees in automotive, and that creates a dilemma because you are asking for a person with technical experience and academic experience at a level that the majority of the people you are trying to employ don't have.

I think there are things we can do better with the program to increase its value to the schools.

This is an attempt to religiously sterilize the teaching of history in our schools.

Teaching reading is rocket science, ... You need somebody in each of these schools who knows how to do it, and that reading specialist has to be looked at as sacred ground, not as someone who can be pulled out every time you need a classroom covered.