Today, I will be addressing an editorial written by my colleague, Mr. Martinez, on Texas education. His arguments basically came down to: we have a sad education system, and we need someone who will actually fix it. While I agree with his basic premise, I have one main critique of Mr. Martinez's post.
In his second to last paragraph he stated, "The problem with Texas education is the lack of funding ... the only way we will be able to greatly improve K12 education is to increase funding." This seems a reasonable conclusion, but let's see if funding really has a very significant impact on academic performance.
A May, 2011 article published in Fox News entitled Public School Per-Student Spending Increases as State Funding Decreases, spoke on elementary through high school funding while looking at a U.S. Census Bureau report. Fox specifically compared Utah (which spends very little per student) to New York (which spends a lot), "In Utah, the lowest per-student spending state, 21 percent of schools failed to meet the goals set under that federal education law. In New York, the highest per-student spending state, 38 percent of schools fell short." Utah actually has a very noticeably higher percent of succeeding schools!
Although it's compelling, looking at only two states is not conclusive on whether or not funding significantly improves education. Let's take a broader look at per-student funding across the US. Senior policy annalist Jennifer Cohen, of The New America Foundation, published the following chart in September, 2010 after looking at data from The Federal Education Budget Project. The chart shows each state's annual per-student spending (on the left side), and contrasts it with the high school graduation rates (on the bottom).
The article (entitled "Examining the Data: State Per Pupil Expenditures and State Graduation Rates") which contains the chart, concludes, "...the scatter plot [seen above] makes it abundantly clear that states are not guaranteed a certain graduation rate depending on how much they spend per student." Though this analysis is only for high school graduation, it still make the point that money cannot buy everything, especially when it comes to education. Further analyzing the data, Ms. Cohen claims, "Instead, how a state (and school district, and school) spends its money matters significantly more than how much money it actually spends."[emphasis added]
In the end, Mr. Martinez's point may be the answer. To "greatly" increase performance, we might need more funding, depending on how you define "greatly." By looking at the above chart, however, it's plain that there are many states that spend less than Texas per student but have higher graduation rates. Therefore, I conclude that our school system isn't necessarily in need of more funding, but maximizing resource use would make a more long term difference.
Water plays a big role in our life and everyday activities. In fact, everyone agrees that water is life.
ReplyDeleteToday is a little bit special because I will be talking about an editorial written by my friend and classmate Jonathan on how Texas government should deal with the water shortage. In his editorial, he agrees that the state should take his hand off the water system and management and at the same time adopt the property ownership by living the management of water to private businesses.
That a reasonable point of view. However, by allowing private businesses to take over the water system, the will seek for profit because a business without benefit is irrelevant. In addition, local agencies that are actually working with the state will have to close and at the same time put many people out of job.
I believe the solution is not the ownership. The solution will come from updating the actual infrastructure. According to Debbie Hasting (vice president of environmental affairs for the Texas oil), the State of Texas needs funding to build necessary infrastructures and implement water strategies in order to avoid a big decline on their economy.
In the seventh paragraph of his editorial, he agrees that the implementation of ownership is not simple. Therefor why make a radical and uncertain change while we can just get the funding necessary to update our infrastructures.