Issues in Education

By Anthony Slawinski

Education is the single most important thing to keep this country moving forward as the world’s only super power.  However, in recent years, it seems that the quality of the education in this country has gone down hill.  We need to make sure that the quality of the education our youth gets is held to the highest standard.  However, in order to fix the problem in education we need to first identify the problem, then work on the solution.

            One of the problems could be is to see if the public schools have enough funding.  There are so many schools right now that have to cut spending in order to balance their budget. They cut after school programs or eliminate teachers.  Something has to be done to get the schools the funding that they need.  The funding for the public school system generally comes from the individual states.  In the recession that we are currently in, states are having a hard time balancing their own budget and it seems that one of the first things that they cut is school funding.  That causes the schools to make cuts they normally would not do.  I guess the only owns getting hurt are the students.

            Appropriate funding is one thing, but watching how the money is actually spent is another.  Schools sometimes operate like the federal government.  Spending money recklessly then wonder why there is no money left to fund the school properly.  For example a public school in Detroit spent a lot of money on a bunch of cappacino machines.  Then, wonder why they don’t have the money for light bulbs or toilet paper.

            Having high quality teachers can be the corner stone in successful education.  Teachers that get students to want to learn and participate in class.  These teachers are very hard to come by.  Most high quality teachers end up going to private schools since the pay is generally higher and they have smaller classrooms.  This is the reason that private schools generally have a higher success rate than public schools.  Public schools need to find a way to, not only find the high quality teachers but to also retain them.  One thing they could do is pay the teachers better and offer better benefits in order to try to keep teachers from moving to a better, higher paying job at a public school.  The problem with that is the fact that the schools just don’t have the funding.

            The biggest thing that could help out public schools is to try to get them to compete.  Have them compete for students, teachers and facilities.  One way to do that is to offer freedom of choice as far as the parent will have the choice to put their child in any school they choose.  Just as long as they can provide the transportation if the child lives outside the district.  This could get more children to get put in performing schools.  Also it would cause underperforming schools to change their program in order to compete.  One other thing is for the state to offer a performance tuition bonus for the schools that perform.  As for the underperforming schools,  if they can’t make the grade then they will need to go under complete restructioring in order to make the school perform.

            There has always been a debate as far as the use of standardized test.  If standardized test could be used to test not only the schools performance but also the teachers performance.  That could be a way to test schools to see if they curriculum is up to par with what it should be.  This could make sure schools are performing of if they need to make some changes.  Also this could be a way to test to see if a teacher is good of if the teacher should start looking for another profession.  The problem with a school trying to get rid of underperforming teachers is the fact that they do not want to face the union.

            Teaching should not be unionized.  The teachers union tends to protect teaching jobs based on how long a teacher has been there,  Not if the teacher is any good or has just gotten lazy over the years.  One trend that has been happening lately is teachers are stating to give up on students that just don’t seem to care and they focus there attention on students who want to learn.  This is a patter that has been coming up more an more.  Basically it has been just laziness on the part of the teacher.  These teacher should get fired.  However it is the union that will protect those jobs and force the school to fire young, ambitious teachers if the school wants to make cuts.  Unions have no place in the schools.

            Public schools have a lot of problems that they need to work on.  Nothing will ever change unless the problems can be properly identified.  As soon as the problems are identified then real change can be made to improve the education and keep this country moving forward