A quality public school system, one that adequately prepares its students to participate equally in society and the marketplace and provide for their families, is the inherent responsibility of any government that mandates compulsory education for its people. Since this is the case in my country, I am compelled to criticize any system that fails to provide the quality education that its students deserve. Unfortunately then, I must criticize the current public school system in my home state of Texas, where the most innovative programs are continually underfunded, the majority of students are underserved, and the playing field is frequently rendered uneven.
Recently, substantial progress in the classroom has been made by a new generation of leaders in education. These forward thinkers are fusing academics with the arts and assessing students with complex, multi-faceted evaluation methods that are to standardized testing what the Hubble telescope is to a pair of opera glasses. Educational models such as Big Thought and Dallas ISD’s recent Thriving Minds after school and summer school programs have proven that an integrated curriculum, one that is tailored to the various inclinations and needs of the individual, is far more engaging than the standard classroom model. These programs produce producer higher learning retention levels, higher graduation rates, and a stronger motivation in their students to complete high school and attend college.
However, the current infrastructure in Texas generally does not support these successful new models for learning. We know that small group activities and low student to teacher ratios increase information retention and decrease negative behavior, but our classrooms are increasingly crowded and teaching jobs continue to disappear. Greater exposure to the arts is now known to affect more than just behavior; there is a direct correlation to the success of a generation’s inventors and scientists, whose effect on the marketplace is enormous. If the needs of the people must continue to rely on a strong and free market, we must supply that market with the high-caliber entrepreneurship that it demands. On the ground, in real life, this means replacing the old, broken public school model with a new one. Both the whole classroom and the individual student must be carefully considered as a new model is built.
First, the classroom must be transformed. Resources, instructors, and support staff should all be in high supply, not the scarcities that they have become today. An increase in the number of instructors and the number of classes will decrease class size, but this is only step one. Each classroom should then be staffed with adequate support. As it is now, a single teacher with thirty students is responsible for a department’s worth of tasks. There isn’t a single university professor in Texas who would willingly pause her lecture to supervise students during a restroom break, yet this is exactly what we expect of our public school teachers, who often possess equivalent credentials. These types of tasks, and many others that are even more time-consuming, could easily be delegated to a support staff of two or three individuals, empowering the instructor to maintain the attention of her engaged students. Combined with a heavy influx of new technology and learning resources, such a classroom would produce stronger, more satisfied students. In addition to helping with certain tasks, the support staff could step in as tutors and facilitators during small group activities and study sessions, providing the kind of necessary interaction that is often withheld from today’s students.
In addition to reforming the classroom, we must expand the ways in which we address the needs of the students in our public schools. Many successful educators and experts refer to the “whole student.” We must consider each individual and what that individual requires to perform at optimal levels throughout the school day. This means going outside of school hours and making sure that hungry students have food, sick families have access to healthcare, parents are engaged in their children’s learning, and the community has a role, and a reason to invest, in the students’ lives. It also means funding a variety of enrichment programs, such as Big Thought’s, that introduce students to a vast catalog of creative outlets. Bringing teams of artists, writers, musicians, designers, and other creative individuals into the classroom will only aid the effectiveness of this new school model. So much aggression in our schools and neighborhoods is the result of unaddressed and incorrectly directed energy. Providing these important creative outlets to students in the same facilities that offers health and wellness services to their families will dramatically decrease violence, poverty, and crime in the communities that are served by the public school system.
In short, our public schools, the system that governs them, and the offices that house the folks in control of those floundering efforts, are all long overdue for a drastic renovation. The ideas have been developed, and the curriculums already exist and have been proven effective. The new models have been tested in isolated incidents of astounding success. Swaths of qualified and committed individuals eagerly await the call to action It is only the poor decision making of a small group of legislators and power brokers that keeps a flawed system in place, and the communities and citizens of Texas are quickly catching on to their game. A revolution in education is surely upon us.
Hublius
“Come senators and congressmen, please heed the call.
Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall,
For he who gets hurt will be he who has stalled.”
-B. Dylan
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