Who knew Texas public education could be talked
about so badly? I went to a high school, Anderson High School specifically,
where the principal always told the students how smart we were, how great of
TAKs scores we get, and how highly ranked our school is. I of course new that
my high school was ranked higher than McCallum High School for example, but naïvely
assumed that just because my high school was very good, that all public high
schools not just in Austin, but in all of Texas were as good as the one I went
to. It was a harsh reality when I found out Texas education is actually
suffering dramatically.
In 2011, Bloomberg News stated that Texas’ ACT and
SAT scores were lower than the national average, and that the state was in the
bottom 10 of states in estimated graduation rate. I had mixed feelings when
hearing this, but mainly was just shocked and embarrassed. Because I had these
feelings, I decided to look up some reasons that might help to explain the bad
connotations Texas education is associated with. The first thing that I saw was
that Texas currently has a $27 billion budget deficit and is partly trying to
balance the deficit by making huge budget cuts in schools (http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/school-daze).
When I read this, I immediately remembered that in my senior year, the principal
was forced to cut one teacher from each department (English, History, etc). Although
the principal was not happy with what she was doing and did not want to be
cutting teachers, it was not her decision – the government was forcing all
schools to cut back.
This made a large number of Texans associated with
the education system furious and were demanding that the government stop the cuts
since it is obviously not helping Texas to have a good ranking in estimated
graduation rate. Although it is unfortunate to be cutting education expenditures,
Texans need to realize that we still have a $27 billion deficit, and have to
figure out some way to fix that. The government just decided to fix it partly
by cutting on schools.
I therefore started thinking of all the other things
the Texas government spends money on that they could potentially reduce not
just to reduce the deficit, but also to reduce the school cuts. Although the
government spends money on an enormous amount of items, the first thing that I
thought of was something currently happening in my neighborhood. I live in the
Allendale neighborhood, and the local government is thinking about putting up a
wall in order to block noise from MoPac. There are mixed feelings about this of
course – some people think it will be great because our neighborhood is
currently too noisy, and yet others believe it will not reduce the amount of
noise significantly and will therefore be a waste of money. I happen to agree
with those who believe it is a waste of money. It will not be a cheap project
and I do not think that a wall which will be a maximum of 20 feet high can
reduce a lot of noise.
My point is that government spending on things such
as walls should be considered with great thought before spending thousands of
dollars because that money can go to a better cause – helping our schools to
providing a better education.
I am glad that I'm not the only one who thinks that education should not be the first thing that we cut. In her post, The Difficulties of Public Education, Megan Ryan talks about her surprise upon learning that Texas is ranked very poorly on a national level for education. She goes on to briefly discuss ways that we can cut other spending to spend more on education, giving the example of a noise reducing wall that might not even work that could be better spent improving our education system.
ReplyDeleteI agree with her, for the most part. I think there's more to the situation that she's not mentioning, but I'll talk about that in a minute. First, I totally agree that there are a lot of unnecessary spending projects that can and should be cut to free up more money for important issues such as education.
Education is our future. A well educated society is necessary if we want to maintain our place in the world. I can't emphasize enough how important I think education, quality education, is to us. I'm in college because I know the value of a good education, and am willing to work to get one.
I thus think that not only should we use more of our money for school, as Megan says, but that we should be using it more effectively. As she pointed out, there's not a lot of money to go around. But what should we be using it on? I think we should look at the leading schools in the world, and take a leaf from their books. I'm going to look at Finland, and what West Virginia has done to copy them.
One of the main things that strikes me about the education system in Finland is the respect given to teachers. Teaching is considered a prestigious position, with many people vying for the jobs, even though they don't pay much better than the ones here. Part of this comes from the training given to teachers, who go through intense training camps and are continually working to improve their methods. One aspect of this we can see, even here, is that the better educated a teacher is, the longer they'll stick around, and the better they're be at their job, on average.
Not only are they teachers much better trained, but they use something called a project based learning system. According to this article, "Project-based learning -- an integral part of Finland's education system -- uses one 'project' as a starting point for learning about multiple subjects and how they fit together." It's a fascinating system.
In conclusion, I think that some of these things should be brought to Texas. They work in Finland, and appear to be working in West Virginia, so I think we should give them a try. After all, they don't seem to require a lot more money, which we are short of, but could be implemented on the budget that we're on.