perfidy

I was wandering through the dank cellars of the Perfidious Archives this morning, looking for proof of my prescient thoughts on a completely different topic, when I ran across this post from the summer of 2005.  Here we are a half decade later, and this is fully as relevant now as it was then.

I quoted from an editorial by California State representative Tom McClintock:

Across California, children are bringing home notes warning of dire consequences if Gov. Schwarzenegger's scorched earth budget is approved - a budget that slashes Proposition 98 public school spending from $42.2 billion this year all the way down to $44.7 billion next year. That should be proof enough that our math programs are suffering.

As a public school parent, I have given this crisis a great deal of thought and have a modest suggestion to help weather these dark days.

Maybe - as a temporary measure only - we should spend our school dollars on our schools. I realize that this is a radical departure from current practice, but desperate times require desperate measures.

The Governor proposed spending $10,084 per student from all sources. Devoting all of this money to the classroom would require turning tens of thousands of school bureaucrats, consultants, advisors and specialists onto the streets with no means of support or marketable job skills, something that no enlightened social democracy should allow.

So I will begin by excluding from this discussion the entire budget of the State Department of Education, as well as the pension system, debt service, special education, child care, nutrition programs and adult education. I also propose setting aside $3 billion to pay an additional 30,000 school bureaucrats $100,000-per-year (roughly the population of Monterey) with the proviso that they stay away from the classroom and pay their own hotel bills at conferences.

This leaves a mere $6,937 per student, which, for the duration of the funding crisis, I propose devoting to the classroom.

To illustrate how we might scrape by at this subsistence level, let's use a hypothetical school of 180 students with only $1.2 million to get through the year.

We have all seen the pictures of filthy bathrooms, leaky roofs, peeling paint and crumbling plaster to which our children have been condemned. I propose that we rescue them from this squalor by leasing out luxury commercial office space. Our school will need 4,800 square feet for five classrooms (the sixth class is gym). At $33 per foot, an annual lease will cost $158,400.

This will provide executive washrooms, around-the-clock janitorial service, wall-to-wall carpeting, utilities and music in the elevators. We'll also need new desks to preserve the professional ambiance.

Next, we'll need to hire five teachers - but not just any teachers. I propose hiring only associate professors from the California State University at their level of pay. Since university professors generally assign more reading, we'll need 12 of the latest edition, hardcover books for each student at an average $75 per book, plus an extra $5 to have the student's name engraved in gold leaf on the cover.

Since our conventional gym classes haven't stemmed the childhood obesity epidemic, I propose replacing them with an annual membership at a private health club for $39.95 per month. This would provide our children with a trained and courteous staff of nutrition and fitness counselors, aerobics classes and the latest in cardiovascular training technology.

Finally, we'll hire an $80,000 administrator with a $40,000 secretary because - well, I don't know exactly why, but we always have.

This budget leaves a razor-thin reserve of just $216,703 or $1,204 per pupil, which can pay for necessities like paper, pencils, personal computers and extra-curricular travel. After all, what's the point of taking four years of French if you can't see Paris in the spring?

The school I have just described is the school we're paying for. Maybe it's time to ask why it's not the school we're getting.

I added:

It’s this kind of thinking that exposes the problems with equating money spent with performance.  The educational bureaucracy eats away at the resources supposedly intended for students.  And strangely enough, we have become so used to the problem that something like this seems radical, strange and wild-eyed.

Just pretend that the previous school infrastructure was eliminated in a series of freak accidents.  Strangely selective tornados demolished all of the school buildings.  The teachers all got on Survivor X, Sierra Leone.  The superintendent was run over by a gas truck.  The principals were all convicted of barratry and loitering.  Nothing survived, and in two weeks, the dear little kiddies have to have a new school system.  Think about it - if you were in charge with creating from scratch a school system, wouldn’t you do something similar?  You wouldn’t even have to worry about providing sinecures for superfluous educrats.  Just provide a safe and confortable place where learning could take place.

This is another situation where the existing system is so out of whack that pouring money on the problem won’t accomplish a damn thing.  Even structural reform is unlikely to be successful given the entrenched interests.  And that is why so many people are home schooling - in the millions, now.  And why inner city families want vouchers to send their kids to private schools.  And why the teacher’s unions are so desperate to prevent it.

There is no sane reason why we fund the educational bureaucracy to the tune of billions of dollars per year.  Every parent who is disturbed by the public education system - zero tolerance idiocies, indoctrination, incompetence, waste - is paying for this nightmare.  And if they want to send their children to private schools, or homeschool, they are going to be paying twice.