New Smyrna Residents are divided on 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, believes "more money would buy better education” while Angela Kaniaris, 35, doesn't buy into such a notion, responding, “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 bought 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.
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," that is, where 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 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 annually, 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 kids a better education by voting for higher school taxes is a vicious act of futile aggression against your fellow taxpayers. Parents need to get off their duff and do something directly effective in teaching their own kids, rather than trying to push the problem off on their neighbor’s tax bill and hope for a miracle.
After all, the age-old adage is putting more money on the problem just worsens it, especially since school administrators and teacher's unions can't seem to control their appetites for salary increases. The more they get, the more they will spend -- and that doesn't mean more classrooms, books or pencils -- just fatter paychecks.
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