I have been thinking about education recently, primarily because I continue to read sample book chapters from a friend who is trying to apply his managerial expertise to improving the public school education of his children.

From what I have read in the past and what I am currently reading, I can make seven observations about education as it is practiced in today’s schools.

One, education is not only about educating children, it is more about the political advantages that accrues to those who are able to direct large amounts of money to special interests; be they land developers, contractors, vendors of various and sundry school equipment and the myriad of consultants which purport to tell educators how to educate our children.

The biggest special interest being, of course, the unions which derive millions of dollars from mandatory dues and used to promote their political agenda of self-interest while allowing their leadership to live like high-paid corporate executives. One wonders why a gym teacher with seniority earns more than a neophyte math teacher should be a great question for the unions.

It is also about a privileged class of public service employees who enjoy significant advantages and protections not found in the private sector.

Using some basic math, even if a teacher earns $70,000 to educate 30 students in a classroom, where does the rest of the nearly million dollars go?

LAUSD’s Scam in a Nutshell: Operating Budget = $12 Billion Construction Budget = $22 Billion Employees = 80,000 Students Served = 650,000 Cost per student = $18,400 Many LAUSD classrooms currently warehouse over 40 students. If LAUSD’s classrooms were limited to 30 children, we would require no more than 21,666 teachers (650,000 ÷ 30 students). WHERE'S THE WASTE? 80,000 employees – 21,666 teachers = 58,334 non-teaching employees  <Source> $70,000 x 21,666 teachers = $1,516,620,000    add another 2 billion in benefits and pensions and you get approximately $3.5 billion dollars for teachers. Now tell me where the rest of the $12 billion going and how much is waste, fraud or the result of mismanagement.

Two, education is being perverted by an ideological fight between conservatives and progressives who each want to provide revisionist history and the promotion of their own ideologies to future voting adults. It seems that each lesson, no matter what the subject, must have some “teachable moment” involving a political ideology. Something which is clearly wrong with the system.

Three, there is a fundamental disconnect between today’s education and reality.  Not all students are qualified nor desire to attend college. Where trade-oriented courses would keep students interested, motivated and enrolled – they are often forced to deal with subjects that have little or no bearing on supporting their needs after graduation. I believe that this factor, more than any other, is responsible for the high drop-out rates in urban environments. My management friend also points out the situation of the “late bloomer” who may not have the maturity or be emotionally receptive to education when it is being provided; becoming more receptive to learning later in their development cycle or during on-the-job-training.

Four, the education system is dysfunctional, allowing even incompetent and unproven teachers to attain tenure – lifetime job security with all of its healthcare and retirement benefits – after as little as two years of unsupervised teaching. As per union dictates, competent physical education teachers are moved back into the classroom to teach English due to seniority constraints mandated by the union.

The recent kerfuffle between the teachers’ unions and the Los Angeles Times highlights  the fact that unions want to avoid rating the teaching skills and subject matter competency of teachers – not for the benefit of the children, but to avoid the consequences when incompetent teachers are fired. 

I was speaking to a student who declared he wanted to become a “computer repair technician” and fix computer hardware problems. The student was greatly disappointed when I told him that by the time he graduated, the job would not exist. That board-level repairs were superseded by board swap-outs and computer replacements. And that the only techs I saw working with computer circuits were design engineers using computers to model their designs, a few design technicians to build prototypes – and that most repairs could not be justified economically. I did not have the heart to tell him about the assembly-line repair process that some smaller manufacturers still support. While I did provide some career guidance, I wondered why his computer-lab teacher had encouraged the goal and failed to explain the reality of the industry.

Five, educational justice is being perverted. While the state mandates that all children, regardless of their abilities, need to be educated in some fashion, how many people realize that we are subverting generations of students with the idea that ill-educated, undisciplined, non-performing or  non-English speakers need to be mainstreamed into classrooms before they are ready.

Bright students are being given short shrift when teachers concentrate on poorly performing students to insure that, at the very least, the school’s standardized scores do not fall too far below the norm.

Ill-educated students are passed along without regard for the consequences. In Los Angeles, the high school exit exams have to be dumbed-down” for political purposes, lest parents and taxpayers find out they are educating another decade of functional illiterates.

By all means build special purpose schools and offer enriched placement classes, but do not fail to provide the basics to everybody: reading, writing, arithmetic, history, critical thinking and life-skills which will produce a functioning adult instead of an aging burger-flipper.

Do not dumb-down the curriculum. Do not offer advanced class placements or achievement awards on the basis of “self-esteem needs.” This approach does not make outstanding students, it makes ill-educated ones who arrogantly and mistakenly believe they are top performers. Offering enriched classes and allowing students to compete freely for admission often makes a measurable difference to those who are motivated and disciplined. And creates nothing but anger and frustration in those who are not motivated or similarly disciplined.

Six, the Marxist concept of the school as parent, provider and dispenser of educational and social justice is deeply flawed. As is the progressive’s  fundamental understanding of a system in which individual achievement should be feted instead of being reduced to an achievement level deemed appropriate by the the collective. Again, the union approach to rewarding seniority over individual achievement and merit.

A significant amount of funding is being diverted from education and used to feed children and to provide a safe pre-school/after-school environment. All with the goal of replacing some level of parental support and involvement while educating students in progressive ideals.

Consider that few resources seem to be spent on improving parental involvement, especially in the areas of parenting affecting parental assistance with schoolwork, motivation and discipline. Perhaps the school’s short-sighted nature when it comes to parental involvement is deliberate. Knowing that hard-working parents, especially single parents and those who continue to dodge the system as illegals, are more likely to allow the school to increase their influence on the student’s worldview and alter their ability to function as members of society.

Seven, progressive educators also appear to be deliberately continuing to ignore the cultural influence of immigrant groups – including first, second and third generation immigrants. All with some perverted notion of shared sacrifice and social justice. Concepts which demand a equal distribution of assets to what is a fundamental unequal system.

One need only consider that the majority of the Los Angeles Unified School District is rapidly becoming non-White and features two predominant and diverse foreign cultural influences, both of which highlight the problem.

• One, the high-performing Asians who are family-oriented, disciplined and motivated towards educational achievement.
• And two, the lower-performing Hispanics who appear to have lesser parental involvement, reduced cultural regard for education and an abundance of discipline problems.

All needing to be reconciled by teachers in the classrooms and managed by school administrators who are, in most cases,  nothing more than glorified teachers. A near impossible task.

Of course this is somewhat of a generalization as there are exceptions to the central thesis; high performing Hispanics and low achievement Asians. Again, my management friend believes that “relative parent illiteracy and low expectations” may play a greater part in the equation and exacerbate the societal problems associated with education than is generally considered.

Bottom line …

Parents need to demand that educational bureaucracy spent more time delivering education than trying to tell us what a wonderful job they are doing with our children.

We need to remove the toxic effects of politics and unions from the educational equation. We need to return to the American ideal of individual achievement over simply meeting pre-determined norms established by the progressives.

We need to improve parental involvement, possibly to the extent of allowing parents and children to attend non-traditional classes together. It may be tough on the parental ego, but it might work.

And we need to elect “honest brokers” to serve “we the people” when it comes to school boards. No jumped-up ego-driven wanna-be social matrons or politicians using the school board as a stepping stone in a political career. Replacing educators with ordinary citizens who have common sense rather than a need to pursue policies as political paybacks.

-- steve

P.S. Permit me one politically incorrect observation: There are too many women teachers in the upper grades which subtly alters “life experience” learning and expectations for young men. Possibly one reason for the increasing feminization of the population as women attempt to tamp down  testosterone-fueled young men who are being urged into a path of political correctness. To this group John Wayne was a retro-trogledyte.