Will I be a Phoenix???

With the state’s budget woes sinking further, would something like selling off the CSU system to a private education provider be that farfetched?


William Tierney’s idea that the state sell off the CSU system for billions of dollars, may seem like a good one on the outside. But is it really?


It would save the state money to look into having someone else take the CSU’s off of its hands.

Tierney probably does not mean for people to take the University of Phoenix as the one end all option here. It’s an idea, an idea that has gotten a lot of glances. It’s interesting to scroll through the comments that have been left on Tierney’s seemingly out there piece. Some have pointed out the fact that he works for a for-profit university, which would seemingly be in his best interest to push something like a private institution taking over the education system.

For a long time the private education system has been seen to be far superior to the public one as well as far more expensive.

There has to be a better way to get small classes, excellent teachers, and work-force ready students without breaking the bank.

Maybe the answer lies in the professors, or maybe in the drive of the students, or maybe, just maybe it goes back even further than that into high school and grammar school.


When was it that the public school system first started failing us?

I would argue day one.

There are many dedicated teachers in within the public school system but they can only do so much against the people who hold the money. I sometimes wonder if the teachers give up and just become complacent. Meanwhile forgetting all the things they wanted to see happen, and year after year turn out mediocre students that will scramble their way up through the rest of the public schools and onward into college.

To be fair, I spent most of my school years in the private sector of education. After seeing how education had gone, my parents decided that they would rather me go into a private school from the beginning, saying that they wished they had kept my sister in a private school instead of sending her to a public one. They always believed that she would have excelled further and done better if they been able to put her through a private school like mine.

I will also admit that I was a tremendous fan of my K-8 experience and when I got into high school I was able to go into all the AP courses at the public high school. The only regret I have is letting them talk me into taking a lower Spanish course then I should have. I should have stood up and said, “No I am going to take Spanish 2, because I know I can do it. I know I can handle it.”

But no. I let administration, the teachers, and my parents tell me that, maybe it was better that I start in at Spanish 1. It would be a great refresher course, and then I would be all set for Spanish 2 the next year.

It was a miserable experience.

I was bored out of my mind. With a huge class size, my teacher didn’t see that I was bored and was able to do so much better. He failed as a teacher, my parents failed to believe in me, worst of all, I failed to stand up for myself.

Teachers get so used to dealing with mediocre students that nothing fazes them and onyl being able to do so much because of the all to commonly blamed "budget problems."

Students should learn to stand up for themselves and demand more from their education system.

Demand that they be taught so that they will be prepared for the workforce. Take pride in their education.

Something needs to light a fire under students so they see that something, something needs to be done with the CSU system, before there is just a moneyless skeleton of a half-way decent education system. Something to get them to take charge of their education, and future generation’s education.


Maybe Tierney’s column will do just that.

Education: Our future?

In Germany students are required to learn multiple languages while they are in school. Some are required to start learning English by the 3rd- 5th grade.

Some even start learning a second language as young as the first grade.

In high school, we had a foreign exchange student from Germany who could speak multiple languages. I remembered being amazed that she knew more than just English and German. She also knew French and Spanish.

And it wasn’t just some key phrases here and there- she was fluent in all four.

That definitely trumped our measly language and a half. Half- being the Spanish we were “learning” but used so infrequently that we did not retain what we had learned the day before. Not to mention the program as a whole was not up to snuff and wasn’t set up to be taken seriously.

At the moment the school system in the U.S. is not up to par with other countries, and not just when it comes to foreign language.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development did a study in 2007 that ranked countries on how well 15-year-olds were doing in science.

The U.S. came in 29th out of the 57 countries that were surveyed, Finland being at the top. Math as well as science is measured in the survey, but they focused mostly on the science aspect in the 2007 study.

Science is a big contender in the world. It can create jobs with new breakthroughs, and bring cures to such things as cancer.

Wouldn’t it make sense for one of the top countries in the world to have students who were competent in the math and science categories?

Really, science has gotten us very far. From Edison with his light bulb, to NASA coming up with the technology that allowed for the MRI machine to be built.

We have had many scientific breakthroughs and discoveries, but it seems like we are slowing down. Could this have something to do with the U.S. score of only 489 on the science survey? A considerably low score and below the average of 500.

The question is: how do we get American’s serious about education?

President Obama wants to lengthen the school days as well as the school year. An idea that may be less than popular with many children, since they just want to get out as fast as possible. Not to mention it would put an even further strain on the city budgets.

On the White House’s Website it goes in depth into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which shows changes to all level of education including higher education.



One point it makes is that Obama “will push to end the use of ineffective, "off-the-shelf" tests, and support new, state-of-the-art assessment and accountability systems that provide timely and useful information about the learning and progress of individual students.”
Here is a good point. Many “off-the-shelf” tests are not designed to really measure how the individual student is actually doing.

Tests like the SAT.

Another great point it makes is the emphasis it puts on just how important teachers are to the learning process. The International Review of curriculum and Assessment of Frameworks put emphasis on this as well.

An interesting point that was made is that in Germany the curriculum is managed by the teachers and it is there full responsibility. The only thing the government controls is what subjects are to be taught, important things like history, math, science, art, foreign language, and even sport.
Maybe going back to the basics would be helpful to getting students interested in school again and tailoring curriculums to subjects that will serve them well in the future