Op-Ed Piece

The Governments to Blame

Education reform is a huge problem here in American and should not be put on the back burner. Our Children’s future and educational outlook should be our main priority to fix. 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 rout and blame the hard working teachers who put in long hours for little pay. In the community of educational programs let that be sports, honor groups, clubs, and even different types of schools like private and charter, there should be no one community that is more valuable then the other. 

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.  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 teach what is on the STAR test, and prepare students to only succeed on those test instead of higher education. The Government solution to the failing system is to just blame the teacher 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. 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 find other reasons for why the public school system is going down the tub and lets try and offer some good solutions. 

In fact its not the teachers that make the difference between the charter schools and the public schools at all, the students even agree.  It has to do with the environment  and the types of kids that attend the different types of schools along with charter schools are granted better equipment and have more to offer their students. The question is why to the charter and private schools get such better support from the government? “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”(Larry Miller's Blog). Now if the government put just as much funding into the public schools and allowed them 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 its the government. 

- Let me know if i am on the right track. the whole idea of writing the op-ed piece kind of confused me.