There are thousands of college students in the state of Texas and many have trouble getting into the school of their choice, much less paying for it. According to collegeforalltexans.com, the average cost of a full school year with 15 hours for both semesters is $28,159. Last year 56% of graduates owed money with an average of $24,030, nearly a full year of school. So how can the state help students? We need to put more of an emphasis on higher education than standardized testing.
Schools are allocated money based on how well their students perform on the STAAR test, so naturally they focus all of their time teaching kids the test. It may be a completely radical idea, but I believe that the state should change their philosophy. If the state started to pay schools based on the number of students who go to college I believe that the schools would focus on sending kids to college, not the STAAR test. As a result, schools would hire staff members who could assist students find the money to go to college. This would have a domino effect, students would be more inclined to receive a higher education, there would be an increase in college graduates, college graduates garner higher wages, and finally the state could extract more tax money. The state would have more money to spend on what it sees necessary, but also would have more money to give back to students. I think that if Texas implemented this method, the entire nation would gain from the influx of well educated, hard working people pouring out of Texas. Also, creating a more educated population could expand Texas' political power by encouraging people to move here. Most importantly, the rest of the nation would see Texas as an educated place, (not a bunch of backwoods rednecks, bible thumpers, and cowboys) which would give our words more weight around the country.
I said it may be radical to some people in Texas, but we need to live up to our sense of "Texas Exceptionalism". If we take care of our students, they will take care of our state.
I agree with your post that Texas should help out their college students and focus less on the standardized tests. If the Texas Education system focused more on the students wants and needs, it will be able to help us get through our college years without having the trouble of worrying whether we are going to get a job under our degree.
ReplyDeleteWe should adopt more policies that have the students of Texas in mind that way our drop out rates are low and so our education system would stop being the butt of everyone's joke. It would encourage us to go to school and want to stay there knowing we are going to be rewarded in the end for all our hard work doing the right thing. Nobody wants an uneducated fool running the country.