Something's Rotten in D.C. Schools?
 

I've had the education debate so many times I could recite my arguments in my sleep. Inevitably, one statistic in this debate is brought up and it's been a quandary for me: D.C. public school funding. According to like 90% of conservatives I've argued with, D.C. spends something like $13,000 per student, per year, which is more than anywhere else in the country, and the schools there are said to be abysmal. I've checked, and they're totally right about the stats and the system doesn't enjoy a good reputation at all.

What the hell? Where is all that money going? Is it because congress has a say in how funds are allocated? Crime?

How much is actually spent on providing education and not on administration?

I haven't a clue. I'm not educated on the subject. Are you suggesting it's possible the expenses are higher due to higher salaries for administration?

Bingo.

Big district=big bureaucracy.

Special ed and intervention for learning disabilities also takes a huge cut of that $$$.

I'd be interested to see if there's a breakdown of that dollars-per-student figure.

So if, hypothetically, we split the DC school district into maybe 3 or 4 districts with equal funding, things might get better?

That's an idea being passed around for Dallas ISD now.

I doubt that splitting the district would help really. I'd bet that would just create 3-4 school boards vs. 1 school board. Among the teachers I've talked to, school boards are the enemy of education and suck up a larger and larger portion of the money that is supposed to be allocated to public schools.

So, hypothetically, if you could eliminate or massive reduce the size, influence, or bureaucracy of the school board, then you might see things get better.

As an aside to this thread; there was a recent push in increase salaries for public school teachers. I support the idea since it would have the potential of drawing and retaining quality people to a field that has been long regarded as a low-paying, career of last resort. However, the fact is that we've suffered for years with recruitment of 'teachers' at the lower pay grades who have made a career out of staying in the system until retirement. In my opinion, it is going to take a generation of new teachers being hired and the old baggage retiring in order to see the positive effects of raising teacher's salaries. Of course, that is dependent on the salaries not being cut again along the way returning recruitment to the bottom of the career of last resort barrel.

I don't mean to imply that all teachers currently in the system are career of last resort type. Surely, some of them do their job with enthusiasm and interest because it is what they truly love doing. But having been through several years in both public and private education, I'm sure that my experience is not unique. For every teacher that was great, there were 3-4 that were just phoning it in.

well if it's anything like NYC... we've got lots of teachers on the payroll who don't teach at all and can't be fired. They just go someplace and hang out for the day and collect a paycheck.

How To Fire An Incompetent Teacher

There's probably a huge amount of waste in the DC school system. Has to be if they are spending that much with so poor results. Probably top heavy with administrators that make way too much for doing way too little. Probably too many teachers that no longer teach, just put in their time and collect their check. There's no doubt teaching in any inner city school system takes a special kind of person. Not every teacher is cut out for that. Find the good ones and pay them handsomely, they CAN chnge lives. Unfortunately, there's too many teachers and administrators that are just along for the ride. Throwing money at a problem seldom fixes it. It just lines the pockets of the corrupt. Fix the system, then fund it appropriately. I suspect the problems are systemic, been there for years. It will take a very strong person to create the change needed.

A lot of this feels like guesswork. Does anyone here have any experience with the system?

I do. There is a huge slobocracy in the system. We have things going on like brand new textbooks sitting in warehouses because somebody sat on them because he didn't feel he got the right form to release them. Meanwhile, some of the nation's most talented young athletes are playing in gyms littered with trash, students are learning in schools where the paint comes of the wall, and using old textbooks.

The money is being spent, and the main reason it's such a large budget is that they're trying to make up for years of neglect. The books have been bought. The paint has been purchased. It's all just slowly making its way through the lazy SOBs who got used to not working.

Michelle Rhee is actually giving teachers a charge to perform or else. I don't know what she's doing about the beauracracy. The board fights her on every step of the way.

It's endemic to all of DC really. The DSS had a huge scandal where a case worker kept writing progress reports on a mentally challenged care receiver. She didn't actually make the visits. Turns out the client had killed her two daughter because they were infected with "demons".

The real kicker, go outside the city north to Montgomery County and you have national top 100 schools. Go just outside to the south in Fairfax and you have the #1 rated school system in the country, and the #1 magnet school.

That's touched on in Stupid in America. Stossel is pretty far right libertarian, so take it with a grain of salt, but he makes a lot of valid points about overly powerful teachers' unions and how private schools have done it better in a lot of cases. My opinion is that secular charter schools are the first big step in the right direction, if not the answer.

The DC system is used as a part of a fallacy, that because a large budget doesn't work in DC it won't work anywhere. I can deal with that fallacy, but if the problem in DC is massive bureaucracy, it represents an issue with my perception of education solutions.

It sounds like the system is, not to oversimplify, top-heavy. Sure, I can understand playing catch-up after neglect, I went to a neglected elementary school, but DC has had a massive budget for a long, long time.

It's more middle heavy than anything. The conduits between the order to action and the actual classrooms. The people who have had the middle management positions in the wearhouses and physical plants.

It's top heavy in the sense that these people have the power to sit on orders until they get their slice of pie or whatever. But Rhee has actually shaken out a good bit of the top.

Schools are required by law to post their salary schedules along with a list of employees and what they make.

I don't have time to look for schools in the DC area and their websites, but you should fairly easily be able to find them and find the salary schedule.