What I Learned On Summer Vacation

                It was pretty hard to miss the walk outs and marches by teachers across the country on Friday. Even if you only get your news on Facebook it would be pretty difficult not to have heard the pleas of teachers for resources and reasonable classroom sizes to allow them to do their jobs the past several years.

                There is no doubt that teachers are underpaid. There is no doubt that teachers do not have the resources or support to do everything they need to do in the classroom. And there is absolutely no doubt that classroom sizes are too large for students needing individual help to receive it or for good teachers to be effective teachers.

                I support this country’s teachers 100% and want to see things get better for them as soon as possible if not immediately.

                Like so many issues this country faces our school system is being smothered and overburdened with too much government help.

It isn’t the money. There is plenty of money. It is what the money is being spent on. Or more specifically whom.

It ain’t your kids or their teachers.

According to a CNSNews.com article from 8/18/14, the number of nonteaching public education employees has increased 130% from 1970 to 2014 while the number of students in the system only increased 8.6%.

Nonteachers on public education payrolls now outnumber teachers in at least 21 states and are over 50% of the number of public education employees nationally.

In 2013, Virginia had 60,737 fewer teachers than nonteachers. Charles Pyle, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Education said simply, “That can’t be.” But the National Center For Educational Statistics for the Federal Department of Education said in many more words, “Yup, it really is.”

                From 1992 to 2009 the state of Texas experienced a 37% growth in student enrollment while during the same period experiencing a staggering 172% growth in nonteachers resulting in an annual increase in education spending for people not involved in educating anybody of $6 billion.

                Nationally this country could have redirected $24 billion ANNUALLY from 1992 to 2009, according to The Friedman Foundation, to teachers and classrooms if nonteaching positions had only grown at the same rate as student enrollment!!!!!!!

                Virginia, Vermont and Wyoming have 104 nonteaching personnel per 1000 students. (Wyoming?) That’s one administrator or service person per 10 kids roughly. Nevada and South Carolina do the best with the least budgetary fat at 26 and 28 nonteaching personnel per 1000 students. That’s one adminbot per 37 students, which is the teacher-student classroom ratio in many communities across this country…possibly the ones with one to 10 administrator-student ratios.

                So who are all these extra employees we didn’t need in the 70’s that are now so critical to the educational experience of kids in school today? I am certain there is an official breakdown somewhere but I couldn’t find it. Maybe a real journalist ought to look for it quick before pigs learn to fly. But as near as I can tell we are talking about nutritionists, psychologists, directors of this or that, compliance officers for various state and federal requirements, support assistants, surrogate parents, outreach officers, and more.

                On a site boasting “The 20 Best NonTeaching Jobs In Public Education,” I found opportunities for a Family Educator, a Content Specialist (after reading the job description I still don’t know what they do but it pays $78K per year, and can be done remotely from home in any city in California near a major airport), Operations Program Director (looked like an IT job at $150K/year), Zoo On The Move Program Instructor (Awww), Non-Teaching Adjunct for College Advancement ($53/hour), Director For Diversity and Inclusive Excellence (!), Curriculum Developer, College and Career Readiness Director, Family Services Coordinator (really?), and my favorite: Virtual Instructional Coach ($45/hour).

                There were others but the above were what I felt were representative of things my parents would have considered tax dollar lunacy when I was in school.

                The Fordham Institute reported in 2008 than one of the biggest nonteaching jobs added over the years in most school districts were “teacher’s aides.” That seems so odd to me since the point of teacher’s aides would seem to be to free teachers up to spend more productive time with students who need it, which is precisely one of the things we know teachers don’t have enough time to do.

                A little digging reveals that teacher’s aides are not necessarily the hands on classroom help you may think of when you think of the job title. Teachers aides is a broader job category now that includes assistants and professionals that deal with special nonclassroom functions like drug issues, health issues, pregnancy, homelessness, discipline and family issues.

                Aren’t those the kinds of things that used to be dealt with at home? Or perhaps not, but they weren’t under the schools purview unless you had a counselor or two that did their job well and cared about the kids (and God bless those folks) but they weren’t extra jobs or “programs” eating up tax dollars that are needed for teachers and their classrooms.

                Yet when you hear The American Federation of Teachers or CNN talk about there not being enough money for education and parading underpaid teachers and doomed students across TV screens to try and guilt the nation into coughing up more money, you never seem to hear about Content Specialists or Virtual Instructional Coaches that may have been added to your school district’s payroll and who contribute absolutely nothing to your child’s classroom experience.

                I found out why! The AFT represents them too! And most of us know why CNN won’t talk about them.

                The statistics on dollars spent in this country on education will make your head spin and then some. I’m not going to get into specifics because I’m already close to 1000 words and just describing the data would take 2000. The website for the National Center For Educational Statistics has pages of charts and graphs documenting what we spend on education, plus it varies greatly by state and it is more data than I care to wade through for free but I can tell you this: All the arrows and bars are going up.

                As a nation we spend more money per child in school now than we ever have. And this narrative that the problem is simply a lack of funds is bull crap, plain and simple. It is a lack of funds being spent in the proper place—on teachers and in the classroom.

                Denmark is the only nation on the planet that spends more money per capita than we do on nonteaching and administrative public education staff. And what do we have to show for it?

There are several dozen graphs on that NCES website that will show you that too. Nothing. No improvement in test scores or graduation rates in over 40 years.

Absolutely start paying our teachers what they are worth. Absolutely start spending every nickel we need to on improving the classroom experience. And take every last dollar of it from existing budgets and tax revenue by getting rid of as many noncritical, ridiculous, made up admin and nonteaching jobs as it takes.

Enough already. Just freaking enough.

Oh shucks, and I’m out of room to start a lively discussion about Voucher Virtue.