This article on the website of the Chronicle of Higher Education, and this blog that accompanies it on the same website, both published on June 12, 2011, discuss a study on the education levels of the state-level legislators who are making the policy and budget decisions for educational institutions. The article and blog were sent to Policy Advocates by coordinator Millie Davis at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) with the simple subject line: "Interesting Articles on the Education of Legislators." Policy Advocates are volunteers among NCTE members who commit to contacting their own representatives and senators in US Congress to apprise them of the NCTE's stance on bills that affect education, especially English/language arts education.
In reading this article, the first thing I saw that made me glad was that Alabama does not have the least educated state legislature in the nation; Arkansas holds that dubious distinction.
According to the findings here, about one in four state legislators has a college degree, as opposed to Congress, which has 535 members and only four without a degree. Almost they found that most state legislators went to a public institution within their own state; very few had left the state for college.
The article leads off with the question: should our democracy be run by an educated elite or by people who most resemble the population? Our reality seems to answer with the former, since the article tells us the only 28% of Americans have bachelor's degrees, yet 75% of state legislators do, and more than 99% of people in Congress do.
One person made a comment below that article that read, "It would be nice to see how qualified the folks were who crafted the new immigration law in Alabama," since there was no specific mention of Alabama in the article at all. Well, I looked it up for him, and Micky Hammon, who sponsored the bill, is an Electrical Contractor with a degree from Calhoun Community College.
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