A recent post from "Keeping Texas History Weird" caught my attention as one of the most interesting so far. The article is about funding for public schools in Texas and I completely agree with this point. The academic decline in the Texas public school system is not a direct result of it being poorly funded. In fact, Texas spends most of it's money on funding schools. In large, I think that the problem lies with the standards set for students. I'm hopeful for new school improvement bills passed last week that will eliminate tedious requirements placed on students and teachers that don't prepare them to succeed on the SAT or in college, i.e. the TAKS test. Students are not performing at such low rates solely because of money, but because they are ill prepared. I found an interesting quote on this topic from House Public Education Committee Chairman Rob Eissler, saying, "The current system did not help our kids as much as we thought it would, we have serious, serious achievement gaps in terms of preparing students for college." He continued to say that while scores on the TAKS test jumped substantially over the years, Texas scores on the ACT and SAT have remained low. So its not so much that we need more money, but that we should put the money we have to better use before "flushing" more funds down the toilet.
On a side note, I also was greatly entertained by the facts given in this post concerning highly funded schools who perform the worst in the nation. I don't understand why on earth Obama would cut the No Child Left Behind program that provided vouchers for students who could not afford private school. I recently read a story on the news about a teenager in Washington DC who was going to school on the voucher program and talked about how her single mother was willing to get a second job in order to keep her in private school for her junior and senior year. It honestly makes me angry. He himself would NEVER let his kids step foot in a public school in DC.
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