The Importance Of Education In Texas

In the state the lower class Texan is currently at right now, the state of Texas provides minimal funding to schools in low income areas. Texas currently spends an average of $8,998 per student; the national average for education is $11,674 ranking Texas 46th in educational spending among the 50 states and the District of Columbia (Stutz, 2014). However, despite the continuous debates on television and radio, the topic of funding education in Texas has been a problem since 1973 with little to no improvements as prior to the legislative session of 2013, Texas ranked 49th in educational spending among the states (Stutz, 2014). Furthermore, despite what ex-governor Rick Perry might state, Texas’ education is not a “…national leader in education reform and student achievement.” (Perry, 2011) It is a real problem the American people need to address.

I mostly liked and agreed with Collins opinion about Texas education system. I do think our education system is not that great. Most of our students drop out during high school, some do not continue their study after high school, there are few who move forward to have bachelors and so forth. I found it funny how Collins describes Texas as being first in size, agricultural products, production in oil but thirty ninth in education, which does explain a lot. Texas have problems with the education system, most states have the education system different and better than us, which also Collins states. Our education was so bad that when twenty three percent young men drafted for world war two, they were too badly educated to qualify for the military.

The History of Texas Texas history itself had its own amazing story. The small number of American settlers moved to the land of Texas had led to the dramatic war with the Mexicans. The land of Texas was used to be owned by Mexicans. Due to the argument between Texans and Mexicans caused the battle of San Jacinto and Mexican War. In long ago before American settlers moved to Texas, this place was so rich and an abundance of land.

Texas, nicknamed “The Lone star State”, has always been very unique compared to any other state in the United States of America. Texas have a sense of great pride in where they come from. Texans hold their heads a just a little higher than anyone else. Texas is the second largest state in the U.S., Texans have their own pledge of allegiance to the state flag, and is the only state whose flag is permitted to fly as high as the American flag. So, why is it that Texans take so much pride in their own state? Texans take great pride in their state because at one point before Texas was a state belonging to the United States, it was its own country. This is how Texas got its name as the “Lone star” State. In nineteenth century, Texas fought many battles against Mexico and its leader Santa Anna, to gain Independence from the country. After many hostel wars and lives lost, Texas made a break through at the Battle of San Jacinto and conquered the Mexican government in the year 1836, becoming the new Republic of Texas. It then remained Independent for almost ten years. Our Independence and history of secession runs through our veins. The topic is a reoccurring one when it comes to politics. In recent years, there have been talks if Texas should secede from the United States again like they did in 1836. According to a poll in 2009, it showed that “50% Republicans, 40% Independents, and 15% Democrats believed that Texas should stand as an independent nation.” “338157 Texans have already

Education development has been an important matter in Texas for decades. Texas has been known for their improvements and reformation in public schools since their first attempt of a public school system. Within these improvements, came issues that escalated to create our public education system today. The issues that helped arrange the system are desegregation, equity in funding, and education policy.

I believe the single biggest challenge facing Texas teachers is poverty. Recent statistic from The Southern Education Foundation indicate 60% of student in Texas public schools live in poverty. Studies published by The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, have found that socioeconomic status, not race, ethnicity, national origin, location of a school is the best predictor of whether a person will receive a college education.

Measuring Up: The National Report on Higher Education stated in 2006: “Texas’ under-performance in educating its young population could limit the state’s access to a competitive workforce and weaken its economy over time.” Yet in the intervening years, Texas leaders have done nothing to reverse this downward trend, instead slashing scholarships and other resources even further.

The Texas Constitution guarantees an "efficient system of public free schools," but schools have recently found themselves unable to provide an adequate education to the more than 5 million students in Texas because of the many problems within the education policy in the state. Such issues involve school financing, lack of preparation for college, early childhood education, teacher quality, and school choice. Tough all of these conflicts pose a potential threat to the school system’s competence and effectiveness as well as to Texas’ economy, there are a broad number of possible adjustment and reforms that could be placed to improve the adequacy of Texas’ school system.

Texas faces many problems with the current educational system and many of them continue to go unresolved due to the way Texas has established certain laws. A decline in education has been seen since 2006 when legislators decided to cut property tax which pays for education (Maule). Those policies only further hinder the progress of education improving, which is why policies like those do not need to be further implemented. More involvement with students is needed and that will be acquired by having more effective teachers. Many studies have shown that students with effective teachers do better in class than those with ineffective teachers. Not only do students do poorly with ineffective teachers, but “[s]tudies show that most students drop out due to poor academic performance. And studies have proven that the teacher in the

In the long history of the United States, Texas is one of the few states that demonstrated three-way segregation including white, black, and Latinos communities. Generally, segregation influenced all dimensions of the society. In specific, former segregation in Texas has left an immeasurable impact on the state’s culture, economy, geography, and education. Despite the fact that institutional desegregation occurred decades ago, segregation of minorities still exists in modern Texas. In particular, the contemporary implementation of Texas House Bill 588 – as known as the “Top 10 Percent Rule” – indicates the state’s tenacious effort to heal the scars of racial segregation in educational perspective. Practically, the law has not only fostered multiracial public institutions, but also reshaped colleges in a statewide scale.

Texas is considered a very diverse and unique state in many different aspects. It is the second largest state with more than twenty-six million people residing. People all over the state live in a variety of environments, cities, suburbs, rural areas, you name it. Of course though, like in everything else, there are always both positive and negative things. However, despite the fact that Texas have very high poverty rates and it has the second highest income inequality, Texas is a very interesting state and it has a lot of things that are worth learning about. I learned some things about Texas politics that I thought were very interesting. These topics include the State Constitution and the legislature.

Some Texas lawmakers are trying to lower the number of standardized tests, let schools pick the test providers to create more competition in the testing market, get rid of the evaluation of teachers by the STAAR scores, and lower the burden of the A-F rating of the STAAR test. Last year there were several problems with the STAAR tests, so much that the company had to pay a $5.7 million fine. When Texas has 17 tests between 3rd through 12th grade, it is about time that it starts to lower the number of tests on students especially young students (Brandeis).

The current state of the Texas education policy is very complex and its roots can be traced all the way back to times were there was no equality in the public school system, we can even say it can be traced as far back to the state’s split from Mexico. This was a very problematic situation that began to be reformed heavily starting in 1954. The legislations that passed to resolve this problem have morphed the Texas Public education policy into what it is today.

Education issues in Texas can affect several areas in the Lone Star State. Texas is the leader of all 50 states in teenage birth rates. This number alone can affect high school graduation rates which also trails other states in the rank of 41 of 50 states, and can be partially to blame for Texas’ last place position of the percentage of population over age 25 with high school diplomas. These low graduation rates affect social issues by forcing people into low income jobs, housing which usually leads to high poverty levels. Texas should be worried about the future that this information predicts because if nothing is done to correct the issue it will only get worse. In order to improve this reality Texas needs to be better equipped to help with

Another challenge is how often Texas changes its statewide testing regiments. So far it has changed four times over the past century, TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) was one of the regiments lasting from 1999 to 2011. The system currently in use and that will end by next year is the STARR exam (State of Texas Academic Readiness). The testing regiments change constantly because they do not accurately gauge a students performance. Also the fact that the main goal of the curriculum is religious and ideological control further hinders the academic performance of students. For example,