Education in the US is in a sorry, sorry state indeed.  This is not a reflection of the teachers, many of whom are kind, caring professionals who put up with a tremendous amount of shit for little return, all in order to help a child, who often doesn’t want to be helped.  The sorry state of education is a reflection of the rape of this profession by politicians, union leaders, and well-meaning, but misguided academics who have turned this profession into a pawn in numerous power struggles.  The sorry state of education is a reflection of the stupid expectations of parents, and the downright ignorance of many citizens of all the goes on in education.

For example.  We had to release two wonderful people who served their community at my school.  One was a Media Center assistant, the other was a part-time secretary.  Both are the nicest, God-fearing people you would ever want to meet, and on the surface, one would think that this was a direct result of Mitch Daniels’ budget cuts, leading to budget shortfalls in each and every public school corporation in Indiana.  Now, it is solid, conservative principals to only spend what you have, but let’s take a look a bit deeper.

Governor Mitch Daniels is a Republican, with a fairly solid conservative pedigree.  Tony Bennett is the Superintendent of Public Instruction.  Both seek to reform Indiana education, but again, the motives are suspect.  Their endgame is county-sized school corporations, with one superintendent for each county.  They also seek to allow anyone with a degree to teach, not just those who have specifically trained to teach children.  They seek to grade teachers based upon student performance, using a normative approach that will mean 20% of the teachers in a school will be publicly graded as ‘F’, regardless of how good that teacher really is.

This is where the budget cuts come in.  First, they froze property taxes, long the primary source of funding for public schools.  This forced the corporations to rely more on state revenues, which have been in decline through this recession.  When Governor Daniels slashed the budgets, they told the public one number, 3%, when in actuality it was closer to 5%.  They also did not take into account (Or did they?) that public school corporations have different budget cycles than the state, leaving many corporations in budgetary disasters, in a state where it is illegal for school corporations to operate in the red.  This has necessitated the reductions in staff that led to the dismissal of two wonderful people.

In April, we will be conducting a massive reduction in force (RIF), to make up a $1.6million shortfall due to these gubernatorial shenanigans.  Across Indiana, it is projected that 5,000 teachers will lose their jobs, along with attendant support staff.  This will increase class sizes, reduce test scores, and lead more schools to fail federal guidelines that were more f’ed up than a football bat to begin with.  Who then takes control of a failing school?  The state.  What will the state do?  Consolidate, and take over control of local school boards.

Our Governor has set up our schools to fail.  Of course, these reforms attack the power of the unions, but in the meantime, fresh, young teachers who are armed with the latest knowledge of teaching will become real estate salespeople, insurance salespeople, or just be on unemployment, as jobs are at a premium here, as they are elsewhere.

Is this the way we want conservative governments to conduct their business?