Graduating is a MUST!

That's what I like about Texas' blog is about Texas having serious graduating problems. Danielle stated that Texas is ranked 43rd out of the 50 states, this was extremely appalling to me. I cannot believe Texas ranked that bad considering the high school I went to I believe I only knew of a few people that did not graduate, but if you take a few from every high school I guess those numbers add up.
I did a little research on Texas graduation rates and found that "Texas' on-time high school graduation rate has reached an all-time high, increasing 1.6 percent to 85.9 percent for the Class of 2011." It also said that this was the first graduating class that had to take four years of math and science, which Danielle said we need to focus on getting college students away from taking remedial courses I believe this may help in a big way. With high school students have to take more math and science and maybe less of the "office aid" classes it will help keep students up to date in certain areas where there are remedial classes. So in turn the state can put less money toward college remedial classes and more toward higher education classes in high school.

Single-sex schools?

There are many private schools that are single-sex, and is quickly becoming the new thing in public schools. There are two middle schools in Austin that are greatly considering changing to single-sex, Pearce and Garcia Middle Schools. Of course the students are not liking this idea at all, the Statesman says "the results from an online survey, taken by nearly 500 students in May, show 81 percent said they would not be interested in an all-boys or all-girls school in their neighborhood, while 6 percent said yes, and 13 percent said maybe."

I do not agree with this proposal, it's going to cost more money, and students will rebel. Texas is already having trouble trying to figure out what to cut from the upcoming budget, this would only cause more of a deficit. The Statesman said the "district estimates show it would cost $860,833 more to operate the two schools as single-sex schools in the first year than the district spent for them in the 2012-13 school year."

Board President Mark Williams thinks there are too many teen pregnancies and that this could help prevent them from happening. This is not going to prevent pregnancy in teens at all, if anything the students will be more interested in the opposite sex. If a child wants to engage in the type of activity that is going to get them into a situation like this I don't think going to a different school is going to stop it.

After researching this a little more, I still don't believe students should be segregated by sex. Though there are some good reasons in single-sex schools like less distractions, better learning environments, and broader educational prospects, I still don't agree with splitting boys and girls in public schools. If parents have problems with their child in public school because of distractions or the learning capabilities of either boy or girl then there are private schools that the parents can put their children in. If we keep children separated by sex through grade school, what do parents think will happen when they go to college??

Planned Parenthood Fraud

After reading Lauren's post on Planned Parenthood, I started researching more on the fraud that is being reported. I honestly could not believe this is going on. In one article I found on this issue it says:
"The complaint alleges Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast had a policy of providing abortions and medical services based on the ability of customers to pay...However, if patients were relying on Medicaid or another government program to pay the Planned Parenthood bill, then planned Parenthood would run up the costs “often provid[ing] services on an ‘across the board’ basis even when such services were not medically necessary.”  This absolutely sickens me. How can the people who work for these government funded organizations do this? I see how it can be easy to feel bad for some women who cannot afford these services, and to maybe help them out a little bit, MAYBE, but to then go and over charge Medicaid to make up for the free services they gave to another woman is absurd! Though I think this is a great organization for women who cannot get annual exams, birth control, and cancer screenings anywhere else, I strongly agree with Lauren's post, and think the government needs to watch Planned Parenthood's books a little closer.  I don't think it is a good idea to start cutting funds to this organization either because it will only hurt the one's who rely on their services.