The Governments to Blame For Public Schools Down Fall

The Governments to Blame for Public Schools Down Fall

When talking about education in the California system one of the main concerns is the budget and how it effects the students and the schools. Education reform is a huge problem here in American and should not be put on the back burner for any reason. Our Children’s future and educational outlook should be our main priority to government funding. Thats why its outraging to read an article that blames the public school teacher for the down fall of the schools while in reality its the government’s guidelines.  The article “Teacher: Step-by-Step guide to how “reform” is harming public schools”, by Valerie Strauss is an eye opening piece to how government wants to handle the education system problems. Rather than taking responsibility for their lack of sense, they would rather take the easy route and blame the hard working teachers who put in long hours for little pay. The problem is when you look at the bigger picture you can see that its not the teachers at all its the government and how they are choosing to spend their funds on charter schools over the public schools.

There are obvious ways to try and fix the failing education system in public schools, if only the government would allow such things to take place.  Elizabeth Walters reports in the New York Times, “All it would take is some new textbooks, better technology and some classroom supplies followed by allowing the teacher to teach how they believe students will learn the best. No more of this we can only allow teachers to teach what is on the STAR test, and prepare students to only succeed on those tests instead of in higher education”. The Government solution to the failing system is to just blame the teachers and start funding charter and private schools because they have a better score report on the STAR test. They think that just because its a charter or private school that the teacher are automatically better and only the best students must be there. “Well thats not it at all, the reason charter school and private schools do so much better is there not stuck to a specific style of teaching that they have to do, or a set of guidelines that they have to follow when they are teaching”, reported by Elizabeth Walters, New York Times. Public schools suffer not because of the teachers, but because of the pressure the government puts on the STAR test.  So instead of blaming the teachers we should consider the reasons they system is failing in terms of the government. 

In fact, it’s not the teachers that make the difference between the charter schools and the public schools at all, and the students even agree.  It has to do with the environment of the schools and the types of children that attend the two different types of schools. Also the charter schools are granted better equipment and have more to offer their students in terms of educational support. The question is why do these charter and private schools get such better support from the government? Larry Miller’s explains in his blog,  “By analyzing the Department of Education databases for the 2007-2008 school year, the researchers calculated that the charter school network received $12,731 in taxpayer money per student, compared with $11,960 at the average traditional public schools.”  Now if the government put just as much funding into the public schools and allowed the teacher to teach different things and not just the STAR requirement than Public schools could be in just as good condition as the charter and private schools. Its not the teachers to blame for the failing education system it’s the government for giving more support to one community over the other.