Save Texas Schools
The Save Texas Schools group is putting together a rally on Feb 23 to oppose Governor Perry’s plan to begin a voucher system here in Texas. The school system here is in serious trouble after the horrendous budget cuts that have been levied on them and the onerous test burden placed on the teachers and students.
The rally will be held at a time when my parents will probably be in town visiting for my son’s first birthday, so I doubt I’ll be attending. Though, if I were ever going to attend a political rally, it would be for something like this. Standing up for a good education system is something we as citizens need to fight for.
Having worked with Texas schools for several years, I can attest to how messed up the whole testing system is. Many schools I went to, the attitude was all about testing. Test prep was all the some student’s did. They were struggling in math so the solution was to make them hate math even more, reducing any motivation they might have had to understand it.
If you live in Texas, get involved with this effort. If you can’t attend, spread the word about the organization, write your local representative, go to a school board meeting, talk to others. Especially if you’re a parent, but even if you’re not. Education affects all of us.
The purpose of public education is to help level the playing field and ensure everyone gets a quality education. Charters, private schools, vouchers all undermine that goal. Every child is entitled to quality education. For the last decade+, the entire public school system has been undermined by this stupid concept of testing and higher standards.
Yes, we need high standards for our education. But that means we need to teach better not test more. School shouldn’t be, as a friend of mine liked to describe it, “advanced day care”, it needs to be a place kids want to go because they get to be with others and learn about things that interest them. The way we currently do it doesn’t work.
And yes, we, as in the society of Texas here, need to fucking pay for it. Good education can’t be done for free. That doesn’t mean it needs to be ridiculously expensive. But you just can’t fix a problem, caused in part by a lack of resources, by taking away even more resources.
The main goal of education needs to be instilling an interest in learning and an understanding of what it means to be a member of society. There are many specific skills that are important but for those first two things, testing does nothing to help, and in fact, is counter productive.
How many adults would like a job where they were tested every week and if they didn’t live up to some arbitrary measure, in addition to the regular responsibilities, they had to do all the grunt work? This testing comes on top of your normal job requirements, so you still need to do everything you do now but have to give up a couple hours each week to take a test. Oh, and if you’re a manager, you get fired if all your employees don’t pass, even though you have no say in who is hired or who is fired.
Now I’m just ranting. But if you live in Texas, get involved. It’s for the children after all 😉
