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”.
