Garcia: The business of education

The source of this article is Arnold Garcia, Editorial Page Editor, Austin American-Statesman. His target audience is main stream Texans that read the local news. Garcia seems to try to back his core ideas with facts but most are lost in broad statements of opinion back with little factoids. Garcias arguments focused on the Texas education system. How it is funded, how effective it is and how it can be improved. He starts out with some interesting facts coving past Texas education success and then focuses the article on our dropout rates. Using real life numbers the author compares the economic impact a dropout has on the economy vs. that of high school graduate or college graduate. The author walks us though the dropout numbers from 2006 in the Austin school district. He then makes an assumption that a majority of these high school dropouts will be incarcerated. Then follows a factual numbers based explanation on how much that will cost society vs. someone who graduated high school. In a nutshell he states that while Texas public education has some problems it works and is still very important to kids. I personally feel that the argument is successful and backed by most of the facts listed. Garcia does lose some momentum when he adds in little "sound bites" of facts that offer no real information but are there to elicit an emotional response.

Again I see the political implications playing out in politician’s upcoming campaigns. This is a hot button for Texas voters and we want a viable solution that gets past partisan politics.

*Title is the stories link