On November 4th the citizenry of Washington elected themselves a new Superintendent of Public Instruction. Randy Dorn has assumed his new position and last week used his position to both please and annoy local school districts.
First, he stated that he was getting rid of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning test (aka: The WASL), which is like the CAT test except that Washington students needed to pass this test in order to graduate (you can read my previous posts on the WASL here). An inappropriate number of people didn’t like this test because it drew a hard line as to who was ready to graduate and who wasn’t. The state teacher’s union put out a disinformation campaign before the test even hit the desks, complaining about “teaching to the test” and other bullshit.
Because giving a teacher standards is apparently mean, and Dorn’s statement pleased local school districts because they can go back to teaching whatever fluffy bunny/pass-fail bullshit they feel like and not have to worry about actually teaching the students.
He then said the unforgivable. He went “public” not only with his salary, but also brought up the salaries of the Administrators who work for individual school districts.
He very bluntly sttated that if his salary were compared to that of those Administrators, he would rank 122nd on the list. Nowhere did he ask for a raise. In fact he explained that he knew the pay scale when he was running for the job and that he was just wanting to point out that there may be some fat to trim when it came to the upcoming school budgets.
121 other school administration professionals at the district level get paid more than the guy who has to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds to get elected to the job.
I must be losing my hearing, because when I ask about why my taxes are going up, the answer usually includes something about school and the phrase “We need to raise taxes For the Children. We do our jobs for the children.”. I must need to get my ears checked, because I never am able to hear the “So long as my salary is high enough” part of what they’re saying.
If these people are going to demand that I not bitch when they ask for my taxes go up, I want them to not bitch when I ask that their salaries go down.
I don’t even see why the state Superintendent of Public Instruction needs to make six figures, which means that I have no idea why the head Administrator for a district where there are less than 20,000 residents total needs to make more. I realize that “the public sector” needs to compete with private industry in attracting “the best”.
However, I’m not going to put up with “the best” then going to the press and demanding that public funds go to “the schools” while they sit back and make “the fat cash” while whining about how they need to take more money out of my hide to go “for the children”.
Let’s face it – teachers do pretty well.
Yes, it’s hard to be a teacher. Yes, we need to attract excellent teachers. Blah blah blah. BUT – you work nine months a year and have amazing benefits.
Some school districts don’t pay so well. Some do. Pay is usually fairly proportional to cost of living in said district. There are continuing education requirements. But it’s not a bad gig. At least, not in Washington state.
The pay for administrators, however, is INSANE. The bloated bureaucracy associated with school districts is where a huge percentage of the money for education disappears to… and has almost nothing to do with actual education.
How do I know this? My mom was a teacher, my best friend’s wife is an elementary school principal, and I know people who work in administration and make big fat bucks. There is no justification for their pay rates.
Phil, your link to your previous WASL discussions comes back here
DUH! – Never mind, I’m an idiot
I’ve never seen the WASL, so I have no idea how it tests children, but I can see how teachers are stuck teaching the test if the WASL is put together badly.
How can you indoctrinate the kiddies to follow the Dear Leader, if you have to teach them, like, math and stuff?
They say that democracy fails when the public figures out they can vote themselves the treasury. But there’s an intermediate step where the government employees (local, state, and federal) vote themselves a chunk of the treasury.
Phil may or may not remember my blogging about the WASL lo, these many years ago when I still had a blog (and the patience to maintain it).
Teaching is a long and cherished tradition on both sides of my family. My grandmother, both parents, four aunts and two uncles are all teachers, most of them retired by now but several still in the classroom. Be it noted that none of them went into administration.
Every single one of them who has dealt with the WASL is against it. These are not liberals in lock-step with the Man; the political leanings of my family run the gamut from center-left to fairly hard right, and *none* of them thought the WASL was worth the paper it was printed on.
My mother has worked for nearly 20 years now with special education students at the elementary level. Her main complaint about the WASL is that it is non-discretionary: all students will take the exam… even if they cannot read more than one or two words on the whole test, they are forced to fill out the answer bubbles for all problems. The instructors are not permitted to read anything for them, except with special permission from God that basically never happens.
Part of the problem is that at the elementary level at least, teachers are no longer *allowed* to fail a student. “No student left behind” was interpreted by the Administration as “Every student moves up one grade each year even if they fail every single exam, can’t read a single word and couldn’t add 1 and 1 if their life depended on it.” If you think I am exaggerating, ask a teacher you know. Unless the parents hire lawyers, no student will ever repeat a grade no matter how badly it might be needed.
Speaking of parents, that is another (HUGE) part of the problem; the vast majority of parents in my Mother’s district invest exactly zero time with their children at home. Without parental involvement, these kids are essentially a lost cause. Special ed teachers have too many students and too many demands on their time to tutor one-on-one these days.
It might be un-PC to point out that the same majority of parents who do nothing to help their children with the work sent home are hispanic, and most of them aren’t here legally to begin with… but the teachers don’t get to pick who sends their kids to school, and they all have to be taught, by law.
Mollbot!
Damn good to see you here amigo. Drop me a line, okay?
And as for the admin salaries? Give me some results commensurate with the investment, and I’ll not complain, even once.
But seeing what I see coming though H.R. these days, I’d say the School Admins owe us one helluva refund.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX