Education in Texas Is Serious Business
The Texas Legislature commits almost 50 percent of the state budget to education and because of that, the people of Texas have high expectations.
Texans are not concerned about how many educators a political candidate has in his family or even if that politician is an educator or a former educator. Texans want to see real reform that focuses on students and teachers, not bureaucracy.
It’s about Teacher Quality, Teacher Quality, Teacher Quality
The most important interaction in the schoolhouse involves the student and the teacher.
Various studies highlight three aspects that contribute to teacher quality: the pool of candidates for teachers; the training and preparation of teachers; and the leading and accountability of teachers.
Attract the Best and Brightest
Employ performance-based practices that encourage the best to consider the teaching profession.
Teacher Preparation and Training
Incentivize teachers to return to the university to complete a graduate degree in their teaching discipline.
Sets an example for the students to develop lifelong learner traits.
Directly affects teacher quality by exposing them to the latest methodologies in their teaching discipline.
Holding Teachers Accountable
Teachers are mentors, motivators, consolers, and innovators and teacher accountability systems should recognize this. It is not realistic to assess a teacher’s performance solely on their students’ performance on one test.
Education: Investing in Texas’ Most Valuable Asset: Its Youth
Mirabeau B. Lamar, the second president of the Republic of Texas and the “Father of Texas Education,” stated that the “cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. The state of Texas has a constitutional and moral mandate to educate the state’s youth. The Texas Constitution states: “A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.” Equipping our young Texans with the skills for future employment is only the means to an end. The ultimate goal of Texas public education is to insure that our citizens have the requisite skills as free people, because economic paucity encourages the people to forfeit their freedoms voluntarily in exchange for basic survival.
Therefore, it is important for Texas public students know and have an appreciation for the values and principles that characterize us as Americans and Texans. It is right to teach our students about the Judeo-Christian heritage of their government. It is right that our children learn about the contributions and shortcomings of all of our national and state historical figures to include the accomplishments of the various groups of people that have settled throughout our land. Unfortunately, forces alien and hostile to our state’s historical culture often attempt to hijack our curriculum development process. Our State School Board is the first line of defense, but the Texas Legislature is the definitive voice of the people and has the power of the purse. If the State School Board is not able to resist these counter-cultural elements that desire to over-politicize our educational standards, then the Texas Legislature must be able to step in and maintain the integrity of our educational values.
Overall, Texas public education needs to be student-centered, parental-responsive, and taxpayer-accountable. The diversity of Texas’ student population mirrors the diversity found in the state’s culture, economy, and geography. We are well into the 21st century and our education system needs to reflect variety of choice, flexibility, and efficiency offered by the Internet and other telecommunications platforms, which our students are all too familiar, of our age. As for education, choice means many things to many people based on their environment. I believe East Texans want education choice that will provide more vocational educational opportunities for our young adults in order to provide them with the existing job skills for the employment opportunities of today. Our families faced with the ever-rising costs of college education and a high school academic program that is antiquated, desire more opportunities to exploit the advantages of our community and junior college systems with dual-credit credit course offerings. Education costs account for almost half of our state budget and it is imperative that Texas taxpayers get value for their dollars not just, because it makes good fiscal sense, but because we direct education spending toward our state’s most valuable asset: our children.
