Money, Money, Money, Money!

MONEY!

That is the universal answer we hear when the subject of failing schools is brought up. With enough money, the districts will be able to turn out thousands of rational thinking genii into our society.

After they take care of themselves, of course.

School advocates have cheered Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s proposal for a $750 million-plus increase in state support for schools.

But a new analysis by The Oregonian shows that at least $500 million of that will have to cover salary increases, rising employee health costs, pension contributions, rising enrollment and higher prices for supplies and services.

That leaves little money left over for pet priorities like reducing Oregon’s class sizes, which are among the nation’s largest, and for programs to add reading tutors and teacher mentors.

Over the next two years, Kulongoski’s budget has earmarked $6.06 billion for schools. That’s a 14 percent increase over current schools spending. But even that amount, education leaders told the newspaper, isn’t enough to add back programs lost during the budget cuts over the last few years.

 

Because of that, a coalition of nine advocacy groups, including the teachers union, the Oregon PTA and Stand for Children, will lobby the Legislature for an additional $240 million toward education improvements, such as reducing class sizes and adding music, art and PE specialists and literacy programs.

Oregon’s school employee benefits — health care and pensions — are the fourth highest in the nation as a percent of payroll.

I don’t mind, in fact, I would love to pay for more teachers and tutors and newer books and computers and anything else a child needs to learn.

But when I have to pay another damned “administrator” to do another dozen “analyses” of the school’s problems, or a “teacher mentor/aide” to do the teacher’s work, or pay for a teacher that cannot teach, and we know that a number of them are incapable of teaching but we cannot prove it because we are not testing them, I just want to tell them to bake some cookies, and if that bake sale goes well, then maybe they should be baking cookies instead of teaching.

When people enter into a profession that they know is 1. Civil Service, and 2. Not a high paying position, then they do not get to bitch about how little they get paid until they prove themselves. Unfortunately for us, the vast majority of teachers coming into schools nowdays don’t care that they haven’t been tested and just want to bitch for more cash and less work.

When I first heard about the demand for more “teacher aides” I thought it might be a good idea. It’ll give the smarter kids in the school something to do for college credit (that was what a TA was when I graduated in the early 90’s). Then I was told that the discussion was about paid semi-professionals who back-up the teacher and I still thought that was OK; at least the teacher will be free to teach and test scores will go up accordingly.

Good fuck, I got hosed on that one.

Teacher’s should get raises, but only upon completion of a true performance test: First they need to pass their own subjects with better than 95% grade, then 80% of their students have to pass the subject with better than a 3.0 average, to be tested and graded on a standardized test administered by the state.

That is perfectly reasonable to ask for the money the citzens are paying out “for the children”.

But that will never happen. The teachers will continue to bitch about “Teaching to the Test” like they do here in Washington with the WASL (which tests 12th graders at the 10th grade level), and they will continue to ask for more money to do less work (lowering the total number of “in school” days for kids and more TA’s).

And schools will continue to suck giant goat gonads, and I’ll have to teach another new employee, fresh out of high school, how to read proficiently before I can teach them how to do their job.