School Reform

School reform is vital for the success of students and the system. Changes in society, demographics, technology, and even curriculum require schools to change the way things are done.   The issue is not whether reform is needed; the issue is whose voice should be heard during reform. In order for reform to have complete success, all stakeholders should be involved in reformation. The voices of teachers, students, community members, local school board members, and state and federal politicians should be heard to ensure that the best reformation is implemented.

When all stakeholders affected by educational reform are not involved, one group can be negatively impacted. This will affect the implementation of reformation or most importantly affect education’s major purpose, student success. One example is a policy that is being enforced by TEA that begins this summer. Due to budget cuts, TEA is disqualifying students that live in a two mile radius from their campus from bus transportation. Many stakeholders will not see a problem with this reform. Politicians may gloat that there are balancing the budget. Tax payers might feel that their taxes are being spent more wisely. Yet, teachers and students will be affected negatively. During the regular school year, this reform might make change, but in summer programs it affects these stakeholders greatly. This is a problem for the 21^st Century Summer program at Lucio Middle School in the Brownsville Independent School District. Due to this issue, students that live close by are not going to be bussed. These students do not have a problem walking, but now the number of students that need bussing dropped so the number of busses for the program was cut in half. Now some students will need to be at their bust stops at 6:00am, when the program does not begin until 8:00am. This will affect participation from students that can use the enrichment program. This is why it is vital for all stakeholders need to be involved in reformation. If students and teacher were allowed to participate, they could at least see the importance of bussing in the summer programs or other programs that have lower enrollment. In the David School, it is obvious that many stakeholders were involved. First, they realized that certain students need special attention. Community members and politicians probably had an impact when discussing the funding for this program.

All stakeholders should be involved in education reform. First the voice of students needs to be loud and clear. Their needs are the purpose of education. Reformation should happen when their needs are not being met because this impacts society. Most third world countries are populated with the uneducated. The social ramifications of not listening to the students’ needs would be drastic. Teachers’ voices are also very important. Teachers are the main implementers of reform. If their voice is not heard the reform might not be successful. Teachers understand best the educational philosophies for students’ success. The community must also be heard. If they are not heard, this could have financial ramification when dealing with taxes and bond issues. Politicians in the local, state, and even in the federal level’s voice is important morally. The United States and especial the state of Texas still believe in protecting students’ morality. If school reform was left to the community at-large, the media and business community will probably have a lot of power over educational reform and there focus is not students’ morality. Yet, even these stakeholders are important because they affect education reform financially.     

School reform is needed, but any reform or change in education is not easy to implement. In order to successfully implement educational reform all stakeholders should be involved. The voices of students, teachers, the community, school board members, and state and federal politicians can become the voice of success.