For the last 30+ years I have been watching what has been happening to our government/public schools, it is an ever devolving situation, that has become just purely ugly. And it has happened from every direction you can look. Test scores have fallen constantly for this whole period, even if it’s not reported as much as it really has, because they keep weakening the tests. And that’s just the start of it. What’s even more concerning is that the “Geniuses of the Ivory Towers of Education” today look less effective than the Keystone Cops.
The leading question I have, and have been hearing from more people all the time is, “How do the ‘supposedly’ smartest people in the ‘education industry’ continue to make the situations worse?” It’s the exact inverse of what you would expect from the actions of the Educrats, as we spend more and more money on education, we continue to see the quality of our schools devolve. It appears we’ve forgotten the words of Einstein, “Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results, is the definition of insanity.” And they’ve been doing this basically the same way since I was in school over a half-century ago. We believe the modern public/government “education industry” is insane. I have a few secondary questions about how this happens.
Question 1. Where does the curriculum really come from? And who really decides what the curricula is? This an interesting question to ask of anyone involved in the process. And even more interesting is everyone I’ve asked, seems to have a different answer depending on their “team”. Ask a member of the General Assembly, who pays for the largest piece of our N.C. schools, and they’ll tell you that is the responsibility of the State Board of Education, implemented by the Department of Public Instruction. Ask somebody in any of that circle, and they’ll tell you they bring in the smartest of the Educrats in the industry and choose the options from these “experts” presentations and recommendations. Ask your local District “leadership” and they’ll defer to the recommendations from DPI and the SBoE. And ask a teacher, and they’ll also defer to their Educratic overlords. And then you have the U.S. Dept. of Education that provides the EOG tests, but will tell you they have NOTHING to do with curriculum. And don’t get me started on what we’re spending on this piece. “Houston, it appears we have a problem.”
Question 2. Who is responsible for the operational and economic decisions for the schools? The bulk of this is determined by the local school districts’ board and administrative hierarchy, and individual school administrators. We could only wish this was that easy. But these people must do this while adhering to mountains of mandates and directives that come from both the National and State government educational hierarchy. Could it be we just revealed a 2nd part of the problem, or another problem?
Question 3. Who is responsible for our school facilities, both construction and maintenance? Again, the bulk of these decisions are in the hands of the local district board and administration. And again, with oversight and input from the State and National governments because they’re involved in how the standards are set because again, they have money in the equation. So, the local district drives the trucks, but the upper levels can direct which roads are used to get there. And then there’s the corrupt school construction industry involved. I’ve written previously about this and here is the link to that article- https://4pba.com/do-we-really-need-more-taj-mahals-for-kids/?v=0b3b97fa6688. The other piece of this is school maintenance. Why do the school districts have their own “inhouse” central maintenance departments? I guess at one time that made sense when schools were very simple structures. But in today’s world, it seems foolish. Why doesn’t the district maintain a small repair structure in each school’s janitorial operation, then establish through contracts, a network of private operators to call in to fix things beyond their ability? From what I see happening around my area, this is the sequence- the in-school staff identifies a problem beyond their operational ability. They make a call to the district maintenance office, who dispatches district personnel to see if they can fix it, or if they need to call in a contractor, which they do in most cases. Is it just me or does there seem to be an unnecessary and very expensive extra step in that plan? Yep, me too.
And these first 3 BIG questions open the door to a myriad of others. But we need to understand the real problem is that government is involved in all this at every level. And what do we know about this in general? If it is something that is done by government, it cost 20-50% more than private industry. And as long as Educrats, rather than real operational and economic specialists, are making these decisions, the price tag only goes up higher. We The People are smarter than this, so why aren’t those who are running our schools? We better figure it out soon!
God Bless America! And America, PLEASE Bless God Again!
