Teachers unions, the Obama administration, and most Democrats in Congress want to spend another $23 billion that we don’t have to shore up public school employment. If we don’t go along, they tell us, it’ll be a “catastrophe” for American education. With fewer teachers our kids will supposedly learn less, further crippling our already wounded economy.They couldn’t be more wrong.Over the past forty years, public school employment has risen 10 times faster than enrollment (see chart). There are only 9 percent more students today, but nearly twice as many public school employees. To prove that rolling back this relentless hiring spree by a few years would hurt student achievement, you’d have to show that all those new employees raised achievement in the first place. That would be hard to do… because it never happened.
On college campuses everywhere too, there's been a massive explosion in the number of administrative positions. Does any university need 20 vice-presidents and such? You know what I think of that! What kills me is that the admin is often nickel-and-diming the teaching staff and always cooking up cockamamie schemes that invariably the faculty hates. What does a VP really add to education? If you spend any time at all in ed and higher ed circles, you figure out super-fast that the admin is usually the problem, not the solution. My hatred of all edu-crats and everything they stand for is a matter of public record.
I see no reason why we should have to pad their numbers in the name of "saving education."
You want to save education? GET OUT OF THE WAY.
And what a stupid idea that because education is important, the only possible way to get it is via the government. Hey, wait! Where have I heard this line of "reasoning" before?
RELATED POSTS: PJ O'Rourke vs. Public Schools, Let's Dump the US Department of Education!, and any post tagged as "edupunk."
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