Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Future of Education
There is plenty of uncertainty associated with the future subsidizing of education by the Federal Government. This is apparent in the fight in states fighting with their teacher unions. Two good opinion pieces (good for perceptive, not so good for citations on position papers) are found in the NY times. The first by the left leaning Paul Krugman. The second by right leaning David Brooks.
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Tyler Row, American Economy, MWF 9:00-9:50A
ReplyDeleteBoth of these two articles explain clearly the dilemna facing state and local budgets throughout the nation, and how political expediency is often in the way of political leaders in charge of dealing with these serious budget problems in the most responsible manner possible. As David Brooks points out quite articulately, those who benefit from the current system possess the mechanisms necessary in order to maintain the status quo. They are able to bind together either through collective bargaining (teacher's unions, other public employees unions, and so on) as well as lobby in election cycles (powerful business interests), or simply have the ability to vote. With regard to the ability to vote, so much of our state and national funding is allocated to the elderly among us (predominantly by means of Medicare benefits payments). While they deserve a fair share of the pie since they are the ones who helped to make our great nation what it is today, a proportionate amount of funds must also be allocated to early childhood education so that we are not only rewarding those who helped to make America great, but investing in our children who will be the ones we will need to maintain its status. Unfortunately, children have no means of asserting any form of voting power, nor do they possess any lobbying power whatsoever. These facts presents the rest of us with a daunting and crucial social responsibility. We must begin to vote and place our money in place of them. As Brooks points out, the future does not have a union. Further, with regard to spending versus tax revenue, Krugman makes an excellent point that while lower taxes are necessary in order to attract businesses, investment, and population growth to states (specifically, he discusses the low taxes in Texas), these rates cannot be so low as to make proper education (and healthcare) investments in our children's education iinfeasable. After all, such reckless short-term budget policy decisions will eventually haunt our states and nation thirty years from now when we have a workforce completely incapable of meeting the demands of twenty-first century jobs market.
Samantha Anderson
ReplyDeleteMWF 9-9:50
Though they represent different options, it is clear that both writers really care about American children, and the education they are getting. I found Krugman's article a lot more detailed and easy to understand. He spoke about how public schools are losing their money and are producing students who are not prepared to enter the real world. Krugman says the saying its "time for the old to pay for the young" is unfair. Having the old pay takes away programs like Medicare and Medicade that both poor and elderly people depend on. In my personal opinion I feel that raising taxes for the wealthy could be a beneficial idea. As mentioned above lower taxes for others will allow new businesses to form without decreasing the funds given to schools.
I agree with Samantha. Something that politicians always struggle with is whether funding should be taken from the old and given to the young or taken from the young and given to the old. Neither of these are really fair because in both situations, neither party receives an income. How can you demand the retired seniors to pay for education in terms of medicare and medicaid cuts if they do not earn any money to pay for it themselves? And how can you demand students to pay for seniors' needs by cutting education when they can't earn money to pay for a better education either? These two groups should be protected from the chopping block when budget cuts come around. The people that that can afford to lose a thing or two are the wealthy. This is not to say that the wealthy should be taxed so heavily that they become the middle class, but I'm sure the wealthy in the country would be more than happy to contribute to the financial success of our economy by paying a little more taxes than they used to.
ReplyDeleteDavid Brooks’ opinion about cutting the programs in the government budget sounds a little morbid and bias. I am for improvements in education and the importance of finding new and innovative ways to educate our children. But Brooks wants to take from the old and give to the new, the new represents our children, the old represents our seniors. Why should one class of citizens have to suffer to improve another? Can we find ways that will benefit our seniors so they can have the best quality and dignity of life for all their hard work and dedication over the years. On the same note, could we find ways to use the money already allocated to the schools in a more productive way?
ReplyDeleteTerrie Hawkins
Nicholas Poiron
ReplyDeleteMWF 10-10.50
I think that the issue of education is one of the most important issues that we (especially as students) face today. The fact is that all of the children that are directly affected by cuts in funding for education are going to be the ones that are running the country soon enough. I think that it is ridiculous to cut the education funding in order to not try and raise taxes for older citizens. I agree with the second author on this point, I actually think that we should greatly increase the taxes in order to regain some of the stature that America once had on the world stage in regards to educational rankings, which would in turn raise other parts of America like the economy, technology, etc etc.
Zhao Liu
ReplyDeleteMWF 9-9:50
"Pay for performance" is a great buzz word about the education system. Two problems I foresee: 1)the government just dump money into the education system and expect it to produce "future Harvard students," and 2) whether the government is providing a fully paid education for every child or not, they will cut spending whenever they want to.
I actually wrote a paper for my HR compensation class about how the school district should link pay and performance together to improve school administrators and teacher performances. In the current systems of public k-12 schools, there are laws limiting the ways schools can spend their money instead of letting them spend it on books and other expenses. I ran into an article last year, forgetting exactly when and where (maybe in California), that a school had a newly built million dollar lunch lounge for teachers and staff when they don't have enough money for books. The official of the school district replied that there are laws limiting the spending of these funds, and if he spends the money on books, it would illegal. Now we see how the government-control systems are so ineffective.
Further, as a victim of "No Child Left Behind," I cannot express how ineffective this law can be. Teachers have to teach the test instead of knowledge, students have to pick their brains for stupid test questions, and the overall test results reflects how well can students take long and scary tests. Bush never looked at the root of the problem and say: hey, we should get better teachers to teach others how to teach students their actual knowledge.
Nicholas Camaioni
ReplyDeleteMWF 9 - 10 AM
Once again I come across an article on this blog that hits close to home. For the last two years I have been hearing the words "Subcontracting" mentioned on a daily basis at my place of work. I am employed by a local school district that, like every district in this state, is feeling the pain of the economic downturn coupled with the cuts being made to Education across the state. It would be foolish for me to say that our Education System doesn't need to be reformed. Yet, this reform will need to be taken carefully. We can't afford as a society to continue to produce generations of children that can't stand toe to toe with children from the other superpowers of our world. Unions serve a purpose in protecting the jobs of teachers within the Education System, but many of these unions have become corrupt with power. Until we are able to fix this problem, we'll never be able to get to the true root of the issues we face in our Education System.
We as a nation really need to invest in our education system. We are far from being the most educated society and this is a problem that the leading world power is not nearly as educated as many up and coming countries. Also the idea of private institutions being better then public is true it should not be. This system will result in a population of educated people from the wealthy families and then a significant drop off for anyone who can not afford private institutions. I feel that if we invest more into our education system and reduce the need for private institutions it will be very beneficial because then those who have been sending their children to private institutions can pay for the increased tax rate which will be less then how much they would put into a private institution. In Sweden the tax rate is very high however they never need to pay for many institutions including education up to higher education and they have a great public schooling system.
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