Our children determine our future. This small statement leads to the larger challenge that is on people’s minds today: Texas should fund public education equally. Last week’s headlines were filled with articles and opinions about Texas school districts being involved in a major lawsuit against the Legislature. The claims were that the Legislature is failing to fund schools as the Constitution laid out.
The article that got me wanting to create some picketing signs and take a stand is located on the Statesman.com. I have a strong belief that if Texas wants to be the great State it has the potential to be, we must support our children to rise higher than where we came from. There is no reason that our children, our future, shouldn’t get the best education possible. There are statistics that show where we as a State rate when compared to other States when discussing education.
We have made some improvements but to keep up with the growth and advancement of the 21st Century, we must adequately finance our public schools. I stand with those stating that the Legislature must enforce the Constitution and its laws. Public schools should be financed equally, regardless of the environment or neighborhood they reside in. Poor school, rich school, that shouldn’t matter; a school should be known as a scholarly school, a school that will educate our children with more than adequate resources and technologies of this fast paced and always changing technical world.
Everyone agrees that hard proof from ratings, statistics, test scores, etc. shows that education should be number one on our list of priorities. Education should be number one for Legislature as well. Texas is a great State and its future generation should reflect how great we really can be. We should be ranked higher in education. We must agree that Texas has to fund public education equally. Our future depends on it.
2 comments:
In a recent blog post my classmate Simona R. Dehoyoz wrote about her passionate belief in funding education in Texas. She works with the Texas Secretary of State and it encourages me to know that someone in that office is so adamant about state funding for education for our children.
She uses persuasive language to argue that public education is of utmost importance to our state if we want to continue to be great in the future. A current battle that is being fought, which she references from an article in the Statesmen, is between Texas school districts and the Texas legislature. The constitution provides for funding for public schools and the districts argue that the legislature is failing to uphold the constitution.
It would be interesting to hear how Ms. Dehoyoz proposes funding public schools to the extent that she believes they should be funded. One proposition I would suggest, and I think that she would agree, is to cut back on testing. While it's important to know how our students, teachers, schools and districts are performing, over-testing creates unnecessary burdens (financial, paperwork-, and stress-related) on teachers, students, and administrators. Testing is expensive, and so I believe it should be done at a minimum.
I like the author's strong stand with school districts for educating our children. I think her post could have made stronger arguments had she included more facts about the current state of education in Texas in addition to her heartfelt admonition that education must be a priority.
Taking a look at several classmates’ blogs, I noticed a trend. Education seems to be an important issue to many of us. In fact, all of the blogs I looked at discussed one of the same issues I did on my own blog: Texas school funding needs to be adjusted. While I agree with Renee’s posting that legislature needs to create a better balance of funding for public schools in Texas, I wish she would have given more details on the subject. There was a link to an article, but it would have been great if more information had been pulled from it. Giving actual figures makes a point much stronger.
However, she does make several strong points on her own, such as the fact that Texas must adequately finance all public schools, regardless of where it’s located or who attends it. I completely agree. We need to close the education gap just as much as the gender gap or the economic gap in society. Giving every student a good education not only improves that student but society as a whole. Those students are our future; to provide an imbalance in education will only create an imbalance in America later on.
I also agree with Renee that education should be number one for legislature. I taught English in South Korea for over a year and can testify to the fact that America in general is way behind in educational priorities. While Korea goes to a bit of an extreme with some students in school and after-school educational programs for nearly 12 hours a day, it has made a difference in their society. Look at how far they have come in these past few decades!
Just as Renee said, if Texas wants to be a better state, then we need to support our future through equal funding for all students.
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