Texas Education System Analysis

Measuring Up: The National Report on Higher Education stated in 2006: “Texas’ under-performance in educating its young population could limit the state’s access to a competitive workforce and weaken its economy over time.” Yet in the intervening years, Texas leaders have done nothing to reverse this downward trend, instead slashing scholarships and other resources even further.

High quality education is a must in U.S. since it means that today's youth will be prepared with the knowledge needed to tackle our nations issues. When looking from state to state, you will notice how various states differ in how well they are able to educate students. Maryland was ranked number one in the nation by having a high grade point average amongst students and an equally high graduation rate. Texas on the other hand had the worst grade point average and graduation rate. The reason for this is the amount of funding that goes into public schools. Maryland puts a lot of funding into their public schools which helps raise grade point averages. Meanwhile Texas puts little funding into public schools and

Let’s begin with “Why Texas policies do not provide or promote the general welfare of the people of Texas.” When you look at all the facts that are in “Texas on the Brink” you can clearly see how much our government does not value the welfare of our future generations. It is defiantly clear why Texas ranks last in almost every category of

To Get A Better School System by Gene B. Preuss explores the journey of educational reform of Texas through one hundred years of inequality, threats, and disagreements. However, the Supreme Court decision regarding Morath vs. Texas Taxpayers has highlighted that even in 2016, additional reforms are needed. Funding for public education is not a new issue and has been a pressing matter since the creation of the Texas educational system. Throughout the process of educational reform, Texans have mainly fought over public education funding in regards to bridging the gap between the portion of funding spent on urban areas and the portion spent on rural areas as well as the small earnings that teachers make. Yet, another area of concern, as pointed out in the article “Texas Supreme Court Upholds School Funding System”, is the Texas Legislature which severely limits the number of available avenues that the state can take when addressing the issue of funding. Together, the past issues of how to fund education and the inequalities that arose in spending, combined with the current issue

To get to this point, Massachusetts had to completely change its educational reform. To achieve a better outcome for the system, school investment had to be doubled. The current total expenditure in Arizona’s K-12 education is clearly not enough. If a real progress wants to be made, a larger amount of funding should be invested. Increasing the amount invested in Arizona’s K-12 education will allow the state government to

In the education sector, Senator Kay and Senator Ralph played an influential role in supporting and enacting policies to promote learning in Texas. Apart from the Bilingual Education Act that Ralph Yarborough

In order to implement this policy, responsibility will be bestowed upon the “Foundation School Program” and the Texas state Legislature (Grusendorf, 2015, pg.2). These two groups play the most vital role in changing and implementing the new “state formulas” (Grusendorf, 2015, pg.3). Both will work together in creating and agreeing to the new state formulas. We will review the formulas every year and decide if funding is truly being distributed with equity. Only if they are not then will both organizations have to re-write the formulas to improve upon them.

I firmly believe that education should be a top priority for the state of Texas. It could possibly be the state’s priority, and the state’s government officials have faith in that high-stakes testing is the best way to enhance education. The high-stakes testing could give students skills in certain areas - such as working under pressure – but a 2016 report shows Texas is still ranked 41st overall in education ("Texas Earns a C-Minus on State Report Card”). There are proposed solutions already in the works, such as the aforementioned HB 133 that proposed to decrease the amount of exams, and also removes STAAR scores from teacher

The article “A Peek Under the Big Top” compares the 84th Legislature to a circus. “-the circus is back in town! The spine-chilling 84th Texas legislature that convened in Austin this month (January 2015) promises to feature daring radicals and tantalizing ideologues in the center ring. This year public education is in their cross hairs!” Then they explain how the schools are under-funded.

Although writing is a task done mainly by one person, nobody writes a book alone. Without the encouragement, suggestions and reviews of others no book - especially this one - would be completed. So I must first thank my seventh graders who looked upon me with eager, innocent eyes willing to accept as gospel my unprepared view of Texas history. There is a special place in hell for anyone who can intentionally misinform such young minds. I couldn’t do it. So began the genesis of this book. Although I only taught for two years while awaiting Arkansas and Texas bar results to become a lawyer, I refused to mislead my students. My own teachers had set high standards of education I could not defer.

Gail Collins, in her book “As Texas Goes” briefly described Texas history and how the era of independent republic gave rise to: don’t mess with Texas mentality. I found this book insightful, even though I was pissed off at first because I live in Texas and many of these things I didn’t know. Collins gives the whole picture without being disrespectful by showing some of her points. However she does give a very good dose of sarcasm which I found very interesting and somewhat funny. Her sarcasm shows the reality and gave me some information that I didn’t really know before. As a Texas resident, a lot of things were unknown to me. But her discussion about textbooks, gun control and mostly education were fascinating and caught my attention. However the things I knew about Texas, and the way she discussed a lot of them somewhat I agree with her, there are some I just don’t agree neither disagree simply because I don’t know enough about them, lastly there are some I do disagree. And of course I was able to learn more details about each area, facts and figures from this book. Though after reading this book it is depressing to see on some of the things she is accurate and right.

The effort to establish the Teacher Retirement System of Texas was a 20-year process which began in 1916. After a few bumps on the road, and collaborations within the Texas Legislature, Governor James Allred signed the program into law under Section 67, Article XVI of the Texas Constitution on June 9, 1937, and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas was in effect as of July 1, 1937. The mission the legislature envisioned remains essentially intact, as TRS continues to strives to provide competitive retirement annuities in order recruit and retain the best educating staff in the nation, however the scope of system’s responsibility has increased considerably. Years passed and in 1985, the Texas Legislature realized that public teachers did not have a health care system so TRS-Care, administered by TRS, was created as a extempore project intended to help state public retired teachers get health care coverage, an additional benefit for public teachers. It however, was not expected to be permanent, and was projected to last no more than a decade; it has now been three decades since TRS-Care projected expiration date. The fund was expected to run out of funds in 2000, but since that time, the Texas Legislature has managed to appropriate and contribute sufficient funds to provide benefits for each biennium. The Texas Legislature determines the funding of benefits and has no constitutional obligation to provide funds for the health care benefits beyond each fiscal year, unlike its

“The school act of 1850 gave legislative recognition to property assessment for school purposes, making it possible for the individual school boards to introduce free schools. If the schools were free, then there was no reason why every child of school-age should not attend them. The task was to bring the children into the schools and, just as importantly, to ensure that they attended with sufficient regularity to gain the benefits of education.”

In Texas, there has many changes with teaching and learning. Over the past years, there has been many laws passed to try and initiate a change within the Texas school system had many laws passed to try and imamate a change in our school systems. In 2002, former President George W. Bush passed a law called No Child Left Behind. This law was similar to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. “The NCLB law which grew out of concern that the American education system was no longer internationally competitive significantly increased the federal role in holding schools responsible for the academic progress of all students” (Klein, 2017). This was to put a special focus on ensuring that states and schools boost the performance of

In the history of education, there are many events and people which one could say are the most important in the development of the current systems of teaching. Here, I have put together a summary of five such monumental events and influential people which I consider the most important regarding schooling and education in the U.S.. Starting with the first establishment of higher education in the U.S., Harvard University, and the first public library, set up in 1698 in South Carolina, and the evolution controversy, which has been ongoing since 1925, and significant figures including John Locke, and Christian von Wolff, the following text describes their importance to the current workings of public school systems in the U.S..