Education
Position Paper:
Education
Education is the fountain from which flow our freedoms, our successes, our future, our very way of life…
Ralph Denney, October 2009
Education is the key to a healthy democracy and to our future. When I was a student of our great state, California Public Schools were the envy of the nation. Sadly, with more than half of all educational dollars being spent outside the classroom, when political correctness and social experimentation have become more important than learning, and teachers are encouraged to ‘teach to the test’, our schools have become more of a warehouse and babysitter than a place of learning the most vital lesson of all – critical thinking.
We can INCREASE the number of TEACHERS, make classes smaller, bring back the ARTS and SCIENCES to our schools, to energize our students without raising taxes or increasing spending. We can actually put pencils and paper BACK into our classrooms along with other supplies and equipment necessary for a modern and relevant education, such as computers and 21st century research abilities. How?! By attacking the waste and the bloat of the educational bureaucracy, and capping administrative costs – especially at the state level – to a reasonable level. Simply put, if the expense doesn’t directly teach our students… it needs to be cut!
As just one example, a simple question: Why is California the ONLY state with two separate and competing administrative departments of education… the constitutional Office of the Superintendent of Public Education, and the Governor’s Office of the Secretary of Education. Both are large, cumbersome bureaucracies which siphon off precious resources well before they can reach our schools and classrooms. I have asked many teachers, politicians, and voters this question… I have yet to receive little more than a shrug as an answer…
Clearly we do not need this wasteful redundancy in our educational system. The Governor’s office would be the easier of the two to drastically reduce in size by simply making it what it should be, an advisor to the Governor and Legislature on critical educational issues with the smallest possible staff. They would need no more than a floor within a state office building, instead of the buildings this ‘office’ now occupies.
And speaking of occupying buildings… The Office of the Superintendent of Public Education has grown exponentially from three floors of a state office building to three full office towers, plus additional office space throughout Sacramento and across the state. The OSPE has two and only two principle responsibilities:
- With the advice and consent of the Legislature, to set and enforce minimum educational standards all California schools must meet;
- To audit public school districts and schools to ensure those standards are being met, to ensure state and public funding is not misspent, and when necessary, to impose necessary changes within districts which are – for whatever reason – incapable of maintaining the standards of a quality education with the prerequisite ethics required of all public servants. This last responsibility can be done in conjunction with the Office of the Comptroller.
By vastly reducing this redundant and unnecessary level of state misspending, we can then ensure more state tax dollars get where they need to go… to the classroom…
We must also address tort reform… The typical California school district spends upwards of 10% of their budget to defend against or prepare for abusive lawsuits which never should have been filed in the first place. But I will more fully address this issue in its own position paper.
As we have seen time and again, the economy of scale is largely an illusion… When applied to school districts, all it seems to do is ‘create’ the necessity of multiple administrators (from the school superintendent earning upwards of a half million dollars a year to the Jr. Asst. Superintendent of paper clips), each with their own fiefdom of secretaries and clerks, to overpaid ‘consultants’ advising on everything from what color the restrooms should be to how best to convince voters to increase taxes, (La Mesa Unified School District, both 2008 and for the November election). By creating smaller school districts, we will not only save in wasted administrative expenses and bloated executive salaries, but would also make the districts more responsive to the needs of its students and communities. We could then significantly reduce the abhorrent drop out rate (21% in San Diego City Schools, over 25% statewide), by empowering our parents, teachers, and students… creating a new and dynamic partnership for the future.
Apart from the finances and budget, we must return to certain intrinsic values for our schools. When I was a student, even more important than the book learning, I was taught CRITICAL THINKING. I was prepared to face the real world and its challenges. We MUST do this again, in part by again making the teacher an honored occupation. We must provide him or her the support they need to do what often is a very difficult job. And that includes backing up the TEACHER when Johnny or Sally fail to learn or are acting out in class. A very simple yet critical way of doing this is to understand that a bad teacher doesn’t make a good administrator, and that a principle of a school who does not spend time in the classroom cannot understand what a teacher must face day after day. I would propose that every middle school and high school principle, vice principle, and councilor will be required to actually teach a class EACH DAY in a subject of his/her certification. Likewise, an elementary school principle will be the first substitute teacher for his/her school, ideally teaching a full class day each week. I would also encourage district superintendents to also spend time in a classroom. This would give our school administrators a better idea, a better feel… for the needs of the students and of the teachers. I would suggest this can be done without increasing the administrator’s workload for, as we’re reducing the size of the bureaucracy itself including wasteful regulations and reports, the workload of the administrator would likewise decrease, freeing up his/her valuable time to become more involved with the true purpose of their job… to TEACH our sons and daughters to compete in an ever more competitive global economy. I have yet to mention this idea to a teacher who hasn’t loved it…
For those purposes where economy of scale actually makes sense - such as purchase and warehousing of supplies, negotiation of maintenance and building contracts, and sharing of transportation costs – I would suggest regional school boards or better use of existing County Boards of Education. In California, such regional entities would be larger than most state school boards in our nation, and would have tremendous buying and negotiating power, at least equal to that of the State itself. This would also retain greater control of our schools where it belongs – at the local level. I would also suggest this regional board would be in a better position to provide for special needs and disruptive students. Not with the intent of concentrating or isolating them in a single location, but of providing greater resources which most schools cannot provide so that they too will have an opportunity to succeed.
Finally, we must also recognize the very unPC notion that not all students either want or are capable of going on for a college or university degree, and there’s nothing wrong with this. We must also provide an appropriate education for those students as well, by offering education in the trades, such as construction, mechanics, and other blue collar professions so that they too will have the tools necessary to succeed and to thrive.
CHARTER SCHOOLS;
No discussion on Public Education could be considered complete and honest without inclusion of Charter Schools, and I will not avoid the issue here. To put it in a nutshell, I support charter schools…
Most charter school do an excellent job of teaching, as measured by exit exams and continuation into and preparation for college. These results have been consistent over the last ten years, and they do it with half the money our public schools require.
Certainly we need to better oversee such schools, (Helix High School comes to mind), and part of the ‘cost savings’ is derived from less regulations and unionization. None-the-less, the formation of more charter schools must be encouraged, (possibly especially for trade schools?), while we better examine the model to see what can be applied to more traditional public schools. There certainly are some problems which must be addressed. We need to close more than a few charter schools which fail to educate and prepare our students or actually present a danger to them. But charter schools are a part of the matrix towards improving our public education and guaranteeing the success of our children in today’s world.
FINAL THOUGHTS;
Every child lawfully in California deserves the opportunity to grow and to excel to the best of his or her ability – whether through secondary, college level, or trade school – as those abilities will take them, regardless of their financial strengths or restraints. It is absolutely in the best interests of society itself to make available all reasonable resources to encourage their advancement and success.
Obviously, there is much more which needs to be done to bring back California Schools from the precipice they are now at. We have barely scratched the surface of our public university system which for over a generation has seen unexplained double digit increases in tuition and costs, and expecting our best and brightest to incur and endure a crippling and unsustainable debt to complete their education.
The above is only an overview and a beginning. But as a Chinese proverb states, a journey of a thousand miles must start with a single step… with your help and support, together let’s take that first step.
My four grandkids… your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren… our future depends on it…
Signed;
Ralph Denney
As revised 12 Sept. 2010
