New Smyrna Residents are divided one the subject of getting better education by putting more money into the public school system. This division is demonstrated by the responses given by two waitresses at Ruthie’s Restaurant. Amanda Fike, 23, replied more “money would buy better education” while Angela Kaniaris, 35, responded, “No, what you need is for parents to get involved in their children’s education.”
The sad fact is that more money will not buy better education. The huge increases in public funding have brought test score improvements that are quite small. A cynic might say that never before in human endeavor has so much been spent to achieve so little. Right now in Volusia County, we are spending over $17,000 per student in the k-12 program. In view of this, any suggestion that the taxpayer is slighting education is absurd.
The reason so many schools are closing is because negotiated union contracts increases have far outpaced state funding, and not only are the teachings getting paid more, but administrators reap the benefits as well. With tax dollars being squeezed by upward spiraling salaries, little is left for capital projects and other spending needs related to education. So what happens? More schols are closed and kids are put into even larger schools that require additional staffing, including administrators. So while school enrollments may be on the decline, class sizes certainly are not.
For some reason this doesn’t seem to bother the education professionals who appear to believe that as long as any improvement, no matter how small, can be detected any outrageous expenditure is justified. The names of these professionals is kept confidential to avoid embarrassing them.
Education has reached “The Parkinson point,” at which putting more money onto a bureaucratic system will not result in more useful output.
In fact, the output could decrease as more money is added. One reason is that there is very little direct incentive to produce anything useful. Furthermore, the added personnel always start creating more work for the people already there. In the school system, the overhead personnel are creating more useless work for teachers such as paperwork to fill out and meetings to go to. When you pay people big bucks to work in a bureaucracy that is what they do.
One of Parkinson’s discoveries was that bureaucracies tend to grow at a rate between 5 and 7 percent per year independent of what they were doing, if anything. The classic case in point was the British Colonial office, which reached its maximum size on the day that India became independent and England had no colonies whatsoever.
So for parents who want their children to get a good education, they must step in personally and take part in the learning process. That means they may have to tutor them and make sure they are reading good books and doing their studies. They might also have to check to see what they are being taught. Some parents might want to check for politically correct indoctrination. (Don’t bother calling the school to complain, just give your kids your side of the issues.)
Trying to give your kids a better education by voting for higher school taxes is a vicious act of futile aggression against your fellow taxpayers. Get off your duff and do something directly effective in teaching your own kids rather than trying to push the problem off on your neighbor’s tax bill and hoping for a miracle.