Utah Governor Gary Herbert admits that Utah’s classes are too large and that more money is needed for classrooms, and also for paying teachers. But the governor told a caller on his monthly Let Me Speak to the Governor radio program Thursday, that the outcomes are still impressive.

He said it will cost about $70 million next year just to pay for new students because of the growing school-age population.

“But I saw the report that just came out on our ACT test scores, which is really the only kind of standardized test to compare how we’re doing with other states,” Herbert explained. “For the states that have the ACT (and we require all of our students to take it, by the way) we are number one on our scoring on our ACT test scores here in Utah.”

He said the state has been putting more and more into education and in fact the last few years around $850 million in new money has gone into education.