From: rdippold@cancun.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,ca.general
Subject: Why the Schools are Broke
Date: 24 Jul 92 02:40:49 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA

Very apropros with CA's current budget "crisis."...  Note the followup.

Useful statistic to keep in mind is that only 44% of educational
employees in California are teachers, compared to 86% in private
schools here.


Why the Schools are Broke
Lance T. Izumi in National Review West

Last year a friend - I'll call her Wendy - signed on to teach at
Martin Luther King Junior High School in Sacramento.  M.L. King, which
is part of the Grant Joint Unified School District, is in a low-income
part of town, with a student population consisting mostly of
minorities.  So you know it was a tough assignment, one made tougher
because Wendy asked to teach 7th and 8th graders with learning handicaps.

But while she was prepared for a challenge, Wendy wasn't prepared for
the conditions under which she was forced to work.  She was astounded
to learn there wasn't a single textbook for any of the kids in her
class (it took an entire semester to goad school administrators into
giving her a set of obsolete, 15-year-old texts).  She also discovered
she'd have to come up with her own curriculum, because none was
provided; paper was rationed; and there was only a meager budget for
workbooks and other classroom materials.  Oh yes: there was no
typewriter, and virtually no access to a telephone when she needed to
contact parents (which was often, because of the disabilities of her
students).  In short, Wendy was presented with a classroom full of
kids - but few of the basic tools needed to teach.

Now, it might sound as if I'm about to argue for more spending on
public schools.  Quite the contrary.  Wendy and her students weren't
the victims of stingy taxpayers - they were wronged by a wasteful and
negligent bureaucracy that will only be encouraged in its lazy
irresponsibility if taxpayers are continually forced to shovel more
dollars its way.

Keep in mind a fundamental point:  In California, only a relatively
small portion of the $16 billion that state government spends on
public schools actually gets to the classroom.  For instance, in
1990-91, of the nearly eighty specialied, "categorical" programs (to
which state education dollars go for narrowly defined purposes such as
computer training), only ten were designated as "classroom
educational" programs, and those ten received less than 10 per cent of
all the spending on categoricals.  A telling comparison: in 1990-91,
the state spent more for desegregation efforts ($517 million) then on
all ten classroom-instructional categoricals combined ($509 million).

California taxpayers haven't neglected schools; real spending per
pupil rose 56 percent from 1970 to 1991.  What's botched things up is
the bureaucracy and its criminally skewered priorities.  Wendy lacked
textbooks not because the money wasn't there, but because the ample
funds already collected were frittered away on administrative fancies.

Don't ever underestimate the extent of sheer mismanagement.  A grand
jury has just issued a report on the Grant Joint Unified High School
District, charging "disarray at the highest levels."  An audit last
year discovered that district officials often didn't ask for bids or
quotes from suppliers, failed to keep records of purchase orders, and
generally didn't have a clue about basic business practices.  This
didn't surprise my friend; she pointed out that the district didn't
have any centralized retrieval unit for equipment and materials, with
the result that many essential classroom items simply vanished.

Grant has also spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on consultant
and legal contracts.  The grand jury discovered that many of the
original signed contracts had disappeared; sometimes the "consultants"
were former school employees (a violation of the state education
code); and occasionally it was unclear where the money for the
contracts had come from.

So, while teachers and students were struggling without books, paper,
pencils, and even adequate heading and cooling, district bigwigs were
fattening well-connected consultants with tax dollars.  The managerial
nightmares were so harrowing that the grand jury called for
"elimination of the Grant Joint Unified School District as a separate
entity." 

That step might be progress, but it wouldn't exorcise waste and abuse
from the larger school system: there are many Grant Unifieds.
Recently the Santa Cruz County grand jury accused the local Pajaro
Valley School District of "sloppy and incomplete record keeping, gross
cost overruns in some offices, and poor management decisions by the
administration."  Among the allegations: the school board let union
officials call the shots on key budget decisions; budgets omitted
crucial information, such as how much money went to specific schools
and to the district office; and earmarked funds were raided and used
for other purposes.  It also charged that administrators had tried to
cover their tracks by providing investigators with misleading
information. 

More horror stories come from the San Ysidro School District, which
sits above the Mexican border in San Diego County.  Acting on
complaints from parents and others, a county grand jury found that the
district had paid out $1 million in judgements and legal fees "arising
from the ill-conveived and often illegal presonnel actions of the
Trustees." 

Among the unique personnel policies: "non-Spanish speakers [teachers
and administators] are purged from the system, regardless of
qualifications or performance," including "those bilingual teachers
who consider English proficiency a matter of urgency."  According to
the grand jury, the emphasis of the bilingual program is on
"proficiency in Spanish with the preservation of the Mexican culture,
at the expense of English learning."  (Certainly there is plenty of
bilingual-ed money to work with:  from 1979 to 1991, spending
statewide on California's Economic Impact Aid / Bilingual program
increased by more than 90 per cent from $143 million to $272 million.)
Is it a surprise that San Ysidro students have the worst test scores
in the state?

These grand-jury reports, along with the complaints of countless
parents and teachers, drive home a brutal fact: a great deal of money
is being squandered throughout the school system.  And with so little
acocuntability built into the system, slowing the flow of dollars from
Sacramento is the only immediate way to impose some fiscal discipline
on the education mandarins and the feudal empire which they rule.  In
the long run, however, general reform will require alternatives, such
as school choice, that dethrone the pooh-bahs and return power to the
people.         
         From National Review
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Actually, from here in San Diego, he's being very easy on the San
Ysidro School District, a pit if there ever was one.  These people
don't want more education money for education, they want more money to
waste in the bureaucracy, however many suckers that requires fleecing.

-- 
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations.
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