We Don't Need No Education

Ok, even if you don't like Pink Floyd, you know this song...

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! leave them kids alone
All in all it's just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall

Well it seems that HISD has decided to punish or possibly even fire teachers whose students are not producing passing scores on standardized tests. Now I know that school funding depends on standardized test scores like the TAKS test, but are the teachers really to blame? Maybe, but I have a different take on it.

My daughters elementary school here in KISD was built about 15 years ago. The principal Ms. L, has been there since the school opened and it has been a state exemplary school every year. The school and the area out here has seen an alarming growth in the illegal immigrant population in the past three years. At the end of last years school year, Ms. L announced that the test scores were just shy of making the state exemplary list. Then she announced her retirement. What is it going to take to wake up our politicians into realizing that we need some serious immigration reform. Or at the very least, enforce the laws that we have. It is bad enough when I loose a bid to another contractor that under bid me because he uses immigrant workers that he pays low cash wages to. But when it starts affecting our kids education and the lack of funding to their schools, I take a serious offence to it.

I guess we are just supposed to sit back while our school system is drained, our health care system is drained, and our social security is all drained by those who don't even contribute to it. Are we going to take control of this or have we really become Comfortably Numb?

...those are the depressing thoughts... on this cowboys mind.


(The Wall: Pink Floyd)