U.S. Senator Michael Bennet says the nation needs an “army of new teachers,” and that we need to “raise the bar for entry into the teaching profession while removing the barriers to serving in our classrooms” (via the Denver Post). His proposed Presidential Teachers Corps would fill 100,000 positions in five years.

Bennet, the former superintendent of Denver Public Schools, explains that educators would start at teacher-preparation schools such as the University of Northern Colorado, where special licenses would be issued to teachers who would, in turn, be sent to high-need, lower-income schools across the country, with the option to bypass varying teacher certification requirements from state to state. Teachers whose students show an improvement after five years would receive a bonus. Read the news release and Bennet’s proposal letter to President Obama via Education News Colorado.