Are Public- Private Partnerships Good?

   When I was growing up I lived in Round Rock and went to school in Austin. I would love the hour sitting in traffic that it took driving into the city because it meant that I could spend quality time with my father and sometimes catch up on sleep. I would get up at 7:00 and I would get to school at just around 8:00 it didn't seem to bother me then because I wasn't the one driving, but now I can't stand it.
    Traffic has always been a nuisance to deal with in Austin but as more and more people are moving here it is only getting worse. In the past 10 years we have added on toll roads and widened certain highways to improve the congestion, this is all thanks mostly to the Public- Private partnerships that the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDot) has put in place. It has become apparent that the funds through gas taxes and vehicle registration fees can not keep up with our growing population and the need to maintain and improve upon roads. This is why Texas government has begun to approve private companies to fund and maintain specific parts of road by implementing toll roads. I think these toll roads have been beneficial but really only for the people who live outside of major cities. The people in Austin are still having to deal with congestion in I-35, Mopac, and Research. I have heard talk, though, that TxDot is thinking about partnering up with a private company to widen Mopac to four lanes and create a toll lane to ease congestion there. When I went to TxDot's website to do some research on just who these private companies are, they seem to have detailed evidence of the agreements and have laid out just what their plans are for the roads. I think we should continue to create Public- Private partnerships because they can only have positive outcomes, it seems we will not be able to keep up financially with what our roadways need to make life easier.

An Article from the Star Telegram

Medical School for UT.

  I read 'Taxes for UT?' a blog post on Burka Blog by Paul Burka. It was a post about how UT is not sure they can financially support the new build and operation of the proposed medical school on campus. The idea to make up for this lack of financial support comes in the package of Proposition 1, a tax increase on homeowners in Austin of upwards of almost 200 dollars. Many people oppose the proposition because they obviously don't want the tax hike. Burka seems to not like the idea because, as he states, UT has the most "endowments of any universities in the country," and instead of taking it forcefully from the citizens the form of taxes they could have a huge fundraiser for the money.
    I honestly feel like there is a need for a medical school here in Austin and we should take any measure to ensure that we get that so people who are really sick don't have to drive to Houston to get top notch medical care. The other side to that is that I don't own a home in Texas so I don't really feel like my opinion counts because I am not directly hit, yet. I can see both sides of this but I know that we need a medical school here so Austin can stay at the forefront of medical advancement.I feel like this article is well thought out but I wish he would have given a little more background information or maybe cited a source for a news document. It was short and to the point and i liked that.

Education Reform

I read a commentary by Sara Stevenson, a librarian at O' Henry middle school, about how she believes the attempts to reform education could be doing more harm than good. The reform for public schools consist of standardized testing and “identifying” and getting rid of the teachers who are doing a bad job. A bad job can be considered as not successfully being able to teach a class as big as "45 students." Many parents and teachers are vocal about their opposition to this and their "advocate" is Diane Ravitch. Ravitch was assistant secretary of education for both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and currently works at New York University.

Ravitch shows us that in "1964" when U.S students took the first international test to see where we stood with the rest of the industrialized nations we ranked "12 out of 12." It seems we have not improved or gotten worse in that ranking.

One point Stevenson makes is that "Finland is ranked number one" on that international test and they don’t have standardized testing. She also points out that Finland also has only "four percent" of children in poverty compared to the "59 percent" here in Texas who “qualify for free or reduced lunch.” She states that poverty shouldn’t be a crutch but just a “reality” in why our school system is failing even with the reform. I don’t think statistics on poverty should have an impact on how a child learns if anything the school should be a safe haven not a testing war zone.

Stevenson realizes that many teachers will be fired as well as leave because of these stringent rules and tests that are put in place and she states that we should be asking questions such as “who will take those teachers places?” and “will we break free of our addiction to data?”

I feel like Stevenson could have spoken more for herself in this commentary instead of using Ravitch quotes more than speaking for herself and really stating her own opinion. I think Stevenson’s intended audience are those people who see the changes in school as a negative and disagree with the Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Race to the Top reforms. I have to agree that education reform is doing more harm because everyone I know that is still in school is not retaining anything they are learning, they are just memorizing facts for the next test they have to take and forgetting them as soon as that test is over.