Education vs Competition - Greg Abbott's Townhall 254

This topic contains 4 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by Julie Zuber 10 years ago.

Education vs Competition

Started by Julie Zuber

I realize the desire to bring Texas up in our national ranking is great, but isn’t the goal for us to really educate the children and moving up in the rankings a by product of that education? I have to say I’m a little fightened by the wording used in Greg’s platform. “Rigorous” was thrown in liberally regarding pre-k. I’m afraid that common sense is once again being tossed out the window in the name of “progress”. Change doesn’t equal progress! Not once were the developmental milestones of 3, 4, and 5 years olds addressed! Are these even considered anymore? There is so much at stake here when you are proposing these monumental changes. I truly believe that whoever is proposing changes should absolutelyl be required to spend actual time in the pre-k classroom. And I mean REAL time! Not just an hour or so. Theory and what should work in theory gets absolutely lost in reality.

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4

Replies

Julie Jumes, 10 years ago

Competition does serve the purpose of test makers and preppers. I believe standardized testing isn’t helping our kids, especially the young…. http://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U

Donna Campbell, 10 years ago

Thanks for allowing us to clarify, Julie! The state’s priority is educating our children – and rankings simply serve to assess performance in meeting this goal. These two concepts are not mutually exclusive – in fact, one begets the other.

Julie Jumes, 10 years ago

Who defines the rankings? Texas ranks 2nd only to FL in the amount of money offered to our Seniors for athletic scholarships every year. We rank at the bottom, along with FL, in SAT/ACT scores. These two ranking stats tend to be inversely proportional. I don’t see standardized testing of children younger than high school age changing either of those stats.

Julie Zuber, 10 years ago

Thank you for considering my post, Donna Campbell, and with all due respect, it was really my concern for meeting the needs of the children in regard to their developmental milestones that I want an answer to. ??? Where is that in this new proposal? Where does a rigorous pre-k reading curriculum fit in with a toddlers age appropriate developmental milestones? We SHOULD have high expectations of our children, but they should also be appropriate expectations. I have high expectations of TEA and TSBOE, but feel that their (collective) need to “improve” our education system has instead brought about chaos and a lack of much needed progress.

The forum ‘Discussion with Sen. Donna Campbell’ is closed to new topics and replies.