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President George W. Bush isn’t off to a great start in my book, I decided after hearing about his proposal for education reform. He started off his first radio address to the nation with a pledge to help schools: “I want to make all of our public schools places of learning and high standards and achievement. Our country must offer every child … a fair start in life with a quality education.”
This sounds like a good proposition, right? Until I heard how he plans to do this I thought so, too.
First off, he wants mandatory testing for “every child every year.” The amount of federal funding that schools get would depend on how well they do on these tests.
Personally, I feel students are put through enough with the mandatory tests they already take. I don’t think more testing is the answer. This only puts pressure on the schools and students and calls more attention to the problems that they already know exist without actually doing anything to fix them.
Bush’s plan only gets worse by adding vouchers to the equation. He says, “[c]hildren and parents, who have had only bad choices need better choices. And it is my duty as president to help them.”
How does he propose to do this? Instead of fixing the problems within the schools they already attend, he’ll let the students just abandon them and choose another, most likely privately funded, school. So instead of giving federal and state aid to that public school, he’ll give it to the student who in turn will give it to the private school. Therefore he really isn’t very focused on making our public schools “places of . high standards and achievement.”
Vouchers not only take away funds from public schools but also take the bright students away. Let’s face it, there’s not enough funds, no matter how high our taxes are raised, to give vouchers to all students, so it will be the smartest kids who care about their education the most that will get them. He’ll probably make another standardized test for that.
But these are the types of students schools want to keep. They are the ones boosting their school’s test scores. Thus Bush perpetuates the downward spiral of public schools yet again because, according to his plan, lower test scores mean less funding. Not only do these students need to help their school out with test scores, but fthey are the heart of the school. They are examples and encourage other students to do well also.
In all his talk I never heard Bush mention anything practical this money would be going to. Let’s start with the basics, like enough text books for each student, ample supplies in classes like art, shop and computers. And instead of punishing the students with standardized tests, how about the teachers. After all, a school can have all the money in the world, but if it doesn’t have capable teachers, what good will it do? Why not take some of that incentive money and give it to schools for teachers?
If Bush was actually concerned about reforming education for all instead of picking through to find the best and the brightest he would put his main focus on public schools and the teachers in them, where the majority of America’s youth are educated. It’s great that he wants to reward the already prospering schools for their achievements, but why not first bring the other schools up to their level of teaching ability to give them a chance to shine. Bush says it perfectly himself, “We cannot expect schools to change unless they have the freedom to change.” Why not give them that chance?
