My first introduction to the flaws of modern American education was from Tom Friedman’s book, “Hot, Flat, and crowded”. The weird thing is, the segments we read didn’t have much to do with education but there was one line that stuck out to me which was “dumb as we want to be”. Now looking back on it, Tom Friedman was defiantly talking about the American populations general appreciation and pride of ignorance, however it still got me to think about our current education problem.
It wasn’t really till we were assigned the community service assignment that I really looked into education as a possible community service project idea. What first got me ended up going into that subject was that I really didn’t want to community service that I thought would be tedious, I wanted to enjoy helping out my community. At the same time, since it is my senior year, I took a bunch of art classes and I spend a lot of time with Mrs. Taylor. Just because we are in such close proximity I hear a lot about how she doesn’t have the funds to get all the canvas and paint that she needs to keep the program running. I found it odd because this is Acalanese, we have tons of money, don’t we? Our education isn’t that bad, is it? Those questions led me to having Education as my primary focus for the senior community service project.
Its really hard to just say what’s wrong with the education in this country, especially what’s wrong with the education in California. I’m going to try to break down the basic problems of our education system but I’d still like to give some facts along with it.
First we have the most obvious of problems which is a funding problem. A well funded school usually is better school because those schools will have the most resources, the better teachers, and the better environments. California schools are getting budget cuts that caused the pink slip affect which was a mass firing of teachers up and down the state in response to the governor’s 4.8 billion dollar tax cut on education in California. Jack O’Connell chief of the state of education said "School districts up and down this state are sending out pink slips to tens of thousands of hard-working, dedicated teachers, administrators, and school staff, not because our state faces a spending problem, but because we face a priorities problem,". My question is, since when did our education not become our priority?
I think that we shouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. I know this is going to sound very egotistical but this is California. Don’t we have a reputation to live up to. We are the west coast shouldn’t we be up to the same level of education as New York or Texas, or the other large states. Sadly we are not doing well in our comparison to other states.
This graph shows the five largest states due to population and the national average and compares them to each other on how much they spend on teachers and on studens. Even though California is the biggest state we spend the least per teacher and per student.
Staff per 1,000 Pupils in 2005–06
New York Texas Illinois U.S. Average Florida California California's Rank % National Average
Total Staff 132.7 137.1 125.4 124.7 117.5 90.0 50 72%
Total District Staff* 8.6 2.9 5.7 5.7 6.6 5.0 35 88%
Officials and Administrators 1.1 1.8 1.8 1.3 0.7 0.4 47 33%
School Staff* 103.8 99.7 96.0 95.2 87.0 70.0 51 74%
Principals/Asst. Principals 3.1 7.0 3.1 3.4 2.7 2.2 49 63%
Teachers 77.8 66.8 63.4 63.9 59.4 48.0 49 75%
Guidance Counselors 2.4 2.3 1.5 2.1 2.1 1.1 51 52%
Librarians 1.2 1.1 1.0 1.1 1.0 0.2 51 17%
Total Certified School Staff 84.5 77.2 69.0 70.5 65.3 51.5 49 73%
This is a graph from the (NCES) National Center for Education Statistics and ass you can tell how poorly we are ranked in comparison to the rest of the country in total staff. Our highest ranking was thirty five and it was for district staff. We got ranked the fiftieth on total staff which is unbelievable because we have the highest population of students. We got dead last in the total amount in school staff. Am I the only one scared by this at all. How bad we are on a national level despite America’s international decline of education.
Recently however there has been very small steps by the local government and larger steps by the Obama administration to reform the school system. Recently the Parcel tax was introduce to the voters. Basically the parcel tax was a special tax that would go to school and education but it didn’t have a spending limit. Many people were opposed to the parcel tax because they didn’t want to pay the extra money for it to go to the school which is really selfish.
In a more recent development, the Obama administration introduced their education reform to the house. It was based on Bush administrations education reform, which at first I thought was a bad idea just because associating your idea with the Bush administration is bad publicity. Hes planning to keep the no child left behind policy but he is now setting up a program that rewards schools if they achieve higher grades. He is also being aggressive with bad schools, schools that fail to improve will be in federal control or will be shut down all together.
When I thought of doing my community service I really wanted it to be something that I liked to do. I didn’t want my fifteen hours to be tedious work that I wouldn’t enjoy. And as I explained earlier I had been in very close proximity with Mrs. Taylor the art teacher and she had been explaining her lack of supplies for her art class. So I thought maybe I should do an art show and give any of the proceeds to Mrs. Taylor. The proceeds would just go to her account and she can spend it on whatever she wants, but it is not like I’m just giving her cash.
I believe that in order to get people to change things you need to play on their emotions. I’ve noticed this through the documentation of Civil Rights protests they play on peoples anger at the situation and I think that the first step to what we have to do in this place. We have let our educational standards slip to much and now its becoming a normality, none said better than by Michelle Rhee "People in unbelievably crappy school buildings, dealing with terrible conditions, whose classrooms are alive with learning. They are just unbelievable. And then across the hall is a classroom that's just the most depressing thing you've ever seen. The kids know it. The parents know it. The administration knows it. It's no secret."
After making the public know how bad the education has gotten and how it will decline even future if they don’t do something to protect it then I would say that we make sure that education becomes a priority. The problem with education and seeing how to fix it is that there is so many angles of looking at it. There so many parts to the system that are always fighting for dominancy so its almost as if we need a completely new system. In a perfect world I say we should make a compromise between the government and the unions so there won’t be a battle for control of the crisis because both of them are doing a terrible job anyway. Then after stopping that struggle for power, the teachers need to be interested in being teachers. What I mean is, pay the teachers more give them more benefits, current conditions for teachers are driving off potential teachers away from the class rooms and into different fields of work. All of that and continued funding from both the state and federal government and the situation might just improve.
During the writing of all the blogs I defiantly learned a lot about education and politics in general and I have actually, due to this class, leaned how to enjoy politics and talking about them. But what I walked away from this experience is that I’ve learned a lot about people. It took me a really long time to plan the gallery out and organize people and I learned a lot about how to treat friends as business partners. At first I didn’t want to micromanage people and to let them to their own thing make their own art and I would just show it. However I ended up having to kick some ass to get people to finish their work in the end. I learned how to work in a professional setting a bit more, I have had a job previous to this but I was on the opposite side of the counter.
