SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Extraordinary teachers should be filmed and broadcast in every class, colleges too. I mean there's so much information and ability to transmit it that we need to allow for innovation and not just be stuck in the old model. But the old model is [in place] because people don't want to allow anybody to get involved with the system.



I'll give you an example. John Stossel did this thing on education a couple years ago and they had 400 teachers who touched kids inappropriately or did things with kids that made them couldn't teach anymore. They couldn't fire them. They had a them in a building in New York City and they just were there day after day being paid, but nobody could fire them because the contract was 14 pages. You couldn't even fire a pedophile. So, I mean, that's a problem.



I would pay some teachers more but I'll would pay some less and I would fire some. But you need to allow that kind of structure to occur where the one who has their with their feet on the desk reading the newspaper and doesn't do squat for the kids needs to be out the door.



DAVID AXELROD: But your Senator thinking of running for president the United States and you don't think the federal government should have any role in any this. Not in terms of providing resources, or --



RAND PAUL: Education historically was a state and local subject and I think that what we've seen is since we've spent about a hundred billion dollars in the Department of Education each year

and that's been going on since 1980. I'm not so sure we're better off than we were before. You see, the one thing --



DAVID AXELROD: So you would vote for a budget that would eliminate most of that.



RAND PAUL: Well what I would do is I would have its spent on the state and local level. I wouldn't take it up there at all, I'd leave it at leave it at home. So you'd spend the money. You might still spend the money in your state government, but education even now, 90, 95-percent of your education dollars are state and local. That $100 billion gets rolled around in a big bureaucracy. They sent rules down that don't help education, they hinder innovation. I would cut them out of the loop. I don't think you'd notice if the whole department was gone tomorrow. (University of Chicago's Institute of Politics, April 22, 2014)