Lean Production: Inside the war on public education

[Smarmie Doofus]

27. A definite YES to these two points:

>>>In my experience with the government; slick sales people talk to upper echelon folk and sell 'shit on a stick' to those people and expect the folks on the ground to make it work. Very often what they are purchasing is not necessary at all. This leaves the people who are actually expected to do the work without the tools they need and burdened with some piece of crap. Very often the slick sales people provide gifts to the folks making the purchasing decisions. >>>>>>

This is no less true in education. A lot of the gimmicky "reform" bullshit trickles down to the classroom in the form of commercial products that are sold as the " next big thing" but are forgotten in a year of two after whoever stood to make $$$ from it has finished making $$$. There are mechanisms.. i.e. agencies... in most systems that are supposed to prevent this from happening. In NYC there's a DOI... a special in house investigatory office... that should be making sure that this doesn't happen. problem is NO ONE trusts it. I imagine the dynamic is the same in most places.

>>>This is one of the reasons I am critical of the extensive administration that school districts have in this day and age. They seem to be gobbling up school budgets and it is not money well spent.>>>>

Teachers and their unions should be more on top of this. It doesn't and shouldn't take five people to mail a proverbial letter ( i.e. one to lick the envelope, one to put the stamp one, etc etc. etc.) But most school administration is like that. It's short sighted for teachers and their unions to look the other way at this. The bigger and more bloated the upper-echelon, the more nonsense work it creates for the classroom teacher. The out of classroom types have to APPEAR to be doing something, after all. So they send-out "memos" about nonsense and "rollout" gimicky new "initiatives". In NYC, breaking up "big" schools and creating a bunch of little schools in their place is a chief feature of "reform". The bureaucracy expands exponentially every time this is done ( e.g. each little school requires a principal, one or more asst. principals, coaches ( like "literacy coach&quot a school payroll sec, an attendance teacher, iep coordinators, etc. etc. etc. etc..)

Some teachers don't fight this because want a "career ladder" ; i.e. a way to escape the classroom. Elsewhere ( not in this post) you make the point that teachers are responsible for bureaucratic bloat. This is partly true. And to the extent that it is true ... we should cut it out.