From: elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green)
Newsgroups: tx.politics
Subject: Re: Teachers
Date: 29 Aug 92 15:08:35 GMT
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <1992Aug28.165945.936@digi.lonestar.org>, by ldillard@digi.lonestar.org (Lawrenece Dillard):
> In article <1992Aug27.150054.6072@awdprime.austin.ibm.com> curt@ekhadafi.austin.ibm.com (Curt Finch 903 2F021 curt@aixwiz.austin.ibm.com 512-838-2806) writes:
>> recently heard that the ratio of administrative personel to total
>>school system employees nationwide has increased from 15% to 30% in the
>>last 30 years in this country.  I don't remember where I read that,
>>maybe "The Economist".  That's where real change is needed.  Fire those
>>morons.  Make 'em get a real job.

Unfortunately, the Federal Government requires differently.

At Dodson Elementary, we have a Chapter One coordinator, a Special
Education supervisor (whose job, by the way, is very needed -- she does NOT
sit around all day getting fat and lazy, the feds require a ton of
paperwork and I as a classroom teacher cannot do it without cutting into my
teaching time), etc. etc. etc.

Few of these jobs would be necessary if it wasn't for the Federal
government and the strings it puts upon monies that they send to local
school systems. For example, for Chapter One and free lunches, we must
verify the incomes of each and every one of the students who apply -- or
else risk losing federal funding. For Special Education, the typical state
folder is about four inches thick of paperwork, all required by the federal
government.

Another problem is sheer size. Our elementary school has 900 students.
Administrative costs have increased accordingly. Unfortunately, the
taxpayers refuse to allow us to install an administrative computer system.
Says the taxpayers, "you don't need such frills. Put the money into the
classroom."

> I read an article last year about some report comparing the NYC public schools
> to their closest private counterpart, the Parochial school system.  The study

This should be a fair comparison. There's a couple of things to keep in
mind, though.

First, the NYC public schools are generally large and overcrowded, while
the NYC parochial schools are generally small and can be easily handled by
a single full-time principal and secretary. School administrative costs
follow a cube-square law... as you square the size, the administrative
costs increase by a power of three (i.e., s**2-->a**3). This is because
doing things like, e.g., sorting book cards by hand, become increasingly
difficult as you have more cards to do your selection sort into. (Comp.
Sci. guys will remember the Big O for sorting). Computerization would
eliminate this but, as I said, we're not given the money to computerize our
school administration -- "it's a waste of money", the taxpayers say.

Second, the NYC public schools are required to offer Chapter One and
Special Education services. The NYC parochial schools are not. The
parochial schools ship students who need special services to the public
school for servicing (e.g., a kid who needs speech therapy will be sent off
two afternoons per week, perhaps). Federal law requires public schools to
offer these services to all students -- not just students who are enrolled
in the public school.

How do we remedy this? First: Eliminate the strings (in terms of paperwork)
that the Feds put on their monies. Instead of having "special education
funding" and "Chapter One funding", have "school funding", on a per-pupil
basis based upon average family income in the school service area (which
can be easily derived from census figures and doesn't require the school's
assistance for calculation). This will eliminate the Chapter One, Free
Lunch, and Special Education bureaucracies in a single sweep.

Second: Give control of the individual schools to the parents and teachers
of those schools. This will eliminate the bureaucratic nonsense of layers
and layers of middle-management telling teachers how to teach when those
same middle managers haven't taught in years and didn't know how to in the
first place (that's why they left teaching, after all). This is how the
parochial schools generally operate, by the way -- they are under the
control of local church officials, generally, rather than under the control
of a hired central bureaucracy. Since these local church officials are not
paid by the school, they aren't counted as "administrators" when you're
comparing administration. For that matter, they generally don't FUNCTION as
administrators. They hire a principal, then occasionally look in to see
whether the principal is doing the job they hired him to do. They don't try
to micro-manage. They don't have time -- they have a church to run.

--
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.sccsi.com         Dodson Elementary
 (713) 437-6908  uunet!nuchat!elgamy!elg      Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"