Bill Hammond, Texas Association of Business' (TAB) President and CEO, wrote that,
“Schools are broken, not broke.” In the editorial he clearly demonstrates a
need to walk in the shoes of a public school teacher. Please, Bill, feel free
to take an unpaid leave from your current job to become a school teacher for five
years, at a school teacher's salary.
I dare you!
Teachers get to raise and
educate every kid, without regard for how prepared or supported they are at
home. A Dr. (of what is not reported) Eric Hanushek's testimony during the
current court case, the most recent in over thirty years of court cases about
financing education in Texas, was that we need to remove the bottom 8% of
unproductive teachers... To have a Doctorate degree and demonstrate such a lack
of understanding suggests that the Doc should also invest some quality time on
the other side of the lectern.
Why aren't plenty of private
schools available? Why has educating the masses always been done in public
institutions?
The answer is simple, unless
(like Bill) you're actively trying to avoid it. Educating everyone is not
easy or inexpensive; doing it really well is even less so. Yes, it costs money,
because it requires you pay enough to get, and retain, great teachers (folks
who can best convey what they know to all others)! It also requires you provide
proper environs and supplies for classrooms.
Testing and testing, when
you've demonstrated repeatedly that you're unwilling to do what is required to
educate students, is as big a waste of time, money and effort as one can
imagine! Also, trying to hide statewide taxation, even insufficient quantities
thereof, via locally collected property and sales taxes is just plain fraud!
The TAB is one of the groups that have shown, time and again, that they
aren't willing to do what is needed, while criticizing the current education
system and its results. Serious consideration about investing for education is
available at: UT, A&M and Rice
Universities, here in TX.
Also from the dedicated souls who have done their best, with what they've been
provided, in the public pre-K through secondary schools of Texas!
Bill, and his ilk, are
entitled to their opinion, but there are others (at the sources listed above)
who are actually trying to effect working solutions. Bill Hammond, and company,
are some of the anchors that keep us standing still.
