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May 29, 2007 08:39 PM UTC
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I would like to see a grand compromise that is composed of:
1) We set an amount per child that increases per inflation or per state GDP increase/decrease and we fund that amount each year.
2) We require each school board to fire the worst performing 1% of tenured teachers each year. Each district can work out the how and the contracts but no state money unless the worst performing 1% is fired.
3) We work on improving the CSAP tests. The problem is not “teaching to the test”, it’s that the tests are not aligned close enough with what should be taught.
– dave
1) How is that different than 23? Serious question.
2) How will this be determined? This reminds me of an article I read a long time ago about Princeton requiring grades being assigned along a bell curve. Not sure about actual practice, but at least one student must fail a class, theoretically. Of course no one goes into a career thinking that they will be the ones to fail, but when your plan comes to fruition I cant help but think this will scare off many qualified people.
3) Another problem I see is the scoring of the test. All students, repeat, all students are scored. It does not matter if they are autistic or AP. A student that happens to be absent that day, or who is willfully held back by their parents count as a zero.
1) It is similiar – I’d like to see it formalized by % of state GDP or tax income – that we set K-12, Higher Ed, Welfare, and other into set amounts so they are not left trying to rob each other.
2) It will scare them off to where? Every other job in the country fires the incompetent. Only teachers have absolute job security.
3) I don’t see this as a problem as all schools face this so it leaves the tests as a very good tool to compare schools with. If you allow some to not take it the schools will try to put every non straight A student in that category.
2)Sorry – if 100% of the tenured people you have are doing a good job, what does mandatory firing of 1% do to help you? Level3 did this every quarter, and it left every employee nervous and in the hands of whatever boss they had after the last firing – good or bad. I wouldn’t work there under that policy if they paid me twice what I’m making now.
3) The problem is at least in part with “teaching to the test”. If everyone learns the same 500 convenient facts so that they can pass a test, then the other 10,000 not-so-simple facts fall by the wayside. We’re raising a generation of myopic, narrow-viewed people with NCLB and CSAP. Aside from that, the test is so important to the success or failure of the school that even with adjustments I don’t see CSAP becoming a completely good tool. Testing is important; standardized testing is important; evaluating schools is important. But setting rigid requirements to a test is a recipe for failing some schools who deserve better – we’ve already seen that.
2) Are you claiming that 100% of the teachers at any school are doing a good job? I’ve yet to see it. I don’t think they need to permanently make it 1% but they need some way to force a start on firing the incompetent. And I think the only way to do that is with a clearly measurable goal. Long term it needs to be simply if you don’t do a good job, you’re fired. That is the case anywhere outside of the schools & other government jobs.
3) If the test has how to spell – is it good that we teach spelling? If it has how to merform multiplication is it good we teach to that? You can’t teach anyone 10,000 facts in a year – the brain can’t hold it all. The trick is to broaden the test so that teaching to the test does provide a wide, varied education that teaches you to critically think. It’s not testing per-se that’s bad, it’s what’s on the test.
2) What I’m claiming is that if you keep firing tenured teachers, eventually you’re going to fire more than you need to or should. Forcing the issue by mandating a percentage is not the solution; reforming tenure terms and creating review panels with flexibility is a better solution.
3) The test is the sole criteria right now for the success of a school. Since you aren’t issuing small tests every month or so (and please don’t suggest it), you are necessarily testing a smaller, more essential body of knowledge – which the schools are under immense amounts of pressure to drill into students’ brains. The ultimate solution is to use standardized testing as a tool, not as a guillotine. NCLB and CSAP requirements don’t give the Board of Ed any latitude towards solving problems or finding solutions for schools with an inordinate amount of troubled students.
There’s nothing wrong with testing essential knowledge, but so long as the results of the test are written in black and white with no gray, the test will result in flawed teaching.
2) In 15 years BVSD has not fired a single tenured teacher – not one. That is a broken system. Come up with a better solution than mine to get rid of the deadwood and I’m onboard. Untill I see something better that works my proposal is frie the worst 1% each year for say 10 years.
3) Again, do you have a better proposal. Before CSAP it was “trust us, we’re doing a good job.” We must measure the quality of the job being done. Better measurement I’m all for – but where is it?
but I will say that mandatory percentages are always a terrible way to go about anything. Come up with good standards and do away with any protections that allow those who fail to meet them to continue in their job. But don’t arbitrarily say we have to get rid of X number of teachers every year.
In most cases I agree with you. But the teacher unions have this so wrapped up that no matter what criteria exist in the contracts – no one gets fired.
So I think we need something like this to force boards to fire the deadwood. No permanently but for say 10 years to create an onging system for firing the incompetent.
but shouldn’t the Principal decide who keeps their job and who doesn’t? He/She is in the best position to determine good vs bad teachers. Do they not have this discretion now?
however, and someone correct me if I’m wrong, the teacher has the right to enter into arbitration with the union and the principal to defend their job. This process is tedious, time consuming and designed to protect teachers against vengful principals. From conversations I’ve had, principals opt to allow the teacher to finish their time rather than enter into a fight with the union.
would be to allow the teacher to request a hearing with the local school board, not the union. That way, if the issue was a vengeful principal and the teacher could prove this with witnesses and/or evidence, the teacher could keep their job and the principal might lose his/hers if the teacher’s case was proven. Let the local school district decide who stays and who goes, they know their own people and community best.
School boards can be just as vengeful as principals. Not only that, but school boards are a way down ticket election race were the “think of the children!!!” refrain is played and played. Just because a school board member is a member of the community does not mean they know the community best.
would be more concerned with the best interest of the school and the children than local school board members?
But you are assuming that local school boards have the best interest of the school and the children in mind when they make decisions, and I cant always agree with that.
Heading should read “I’m not terribly well informed about education issues…”
why the schools need another 1.8 billion? Is it rising population, decreases in tax monies received, inflation in goods and services needed by schools? And what will happen if they don’t get it? Massive closures, teacher layoffs, kids being turned away, locust swarms?
Bonus question for Pols: When you type Dick Wadhams’ name, do you grind your teeth a little?
Wasn’t Ref C sold as a solution to help cover the needs of K-12 without having to defund Higher Ed? Now, we are told that we need to raise an additional $1.8 bil for K-12… Also, weren’t the expected revenues from Ref. C recently revised upward by more than $1 billion … where is that money going?
Ref C was for Higher Ed – that’s colleges/universities. This is K-12. Different parts.
Ref. C was premised on opening the budget to cover K-12, higher education, prisons, roads, pension funds, etc.
Why IS more money needed? Seventy percent of the operations budget goes to salaries; are we just going to pay people higher wages so we can get the same (lousy) results? I’m all in favor of paying more once we see improved performance. The problem is not funding, it’s priorities. The educational establishment needs to get theirs straight!
I do believe that higher ed is underfunded but they also need to be held accountable for the quality of their output.
Do you expect to hire a competent and experienced manager/engineer/programmer for below industry standards and then tell them they’ll get more if they and their co-workers all do well? Or do you expect to hire competent and experienced workers by offering them more money, and then watching as they improve your company?
This country has an institutional hatred for reasonable teacher salaries. There’s no other way to put it. If it were up to me, I’d pay them equal to any technical professional; they’re responsible for the training of our children. Maybe if we weren’t paying teachers moderate salaries for their extensive training and education, we’d attract better teachers… Just a thought.
If I hire a programmer and they are doing a bad job – I fire them.
If I hire a programmer I don’t get them just 9 months of the year with a 3 month vacation.
I think the big opposition to better teacher salaries is that when it comes to pay people are thinking about the 1 or 2 crappy teachers there kids have had and refuse to increase pay as long as those incompetents are among those getting the increase.
I think if schools could get rid fo the deadwood people would be a lot more supportive of paying teachers 3/4 (summer vacation) of what similiar professionals earn.
– dave
Summer = ongoing training and planning – or at least it did for my teachers. And that doesn’t count the after-hours grading of papers and tests, lesson preparation, money spent purchasing supplies for the class because the district can’t afford them…
But yes, I think teachers need to be good or gone; the tenure system shouldn’t be a crutch, but an incentive.
All of the above. We’re already near the bottom of state rankings in per-student funding, and without the tax freeze, the situation is going to get worse. Adjusted for inflation, the amount is going to get lower and lower every year in today’s dollars, despite growth pressures, construction cost increases, gas cost increases, materials increases, etc.
You can talk about efficiencies all you want, and those are some good ideas, but starving the district of much needed funds is not the way to go about it.
How will schools cope if they don’t get the money? Simple, larger class sizes. Or close schools. It’s one way to handle population growth, but it’s not necessarily the best.
I am only wondering what has been done with the money that has already be set aside to cover the cost. Before you get more money (despite need), it is worth asking where the money you already had got spent… If spent legitimately, and there is still legitimate need for additional funding, them I am fine with getting the additional funding. But I am not convinced that the prerequisite due dilligence has been done yet…
Our funding per student is middle of the pack. Utah is much lower and does much better. Spending as a percentage of income level is low – maybe that’s what you meant.
It was horrifyingly bad when Amendment 23 was passed. Schools are like any other institution – they take time to mend when broken. Expecting immediate results from something that’s just barely kicked in is unreasonable.
The amendment was supposed to generate a huge trust fund over its 10-year timeline. The recession prevented the state from doing that. To avoid the A23-created State Education Fund from essentially being broke, school finance needs more local revenue. That’s the reason…ironic, eh? The solution is up for continued discussion, apparently.
In private industry, the worst performers (worst customer service, highest costs, most laggard innovation, lazy management) are usually industries with a monopoly or businesses provided by government agencies. Think Qwest and the Soviet Union.
Giving a monopoly or a government-run business more money does not improve its performance. Making the monopoly compete for its money is usually what it takes to improve performance.
The same economic dynamic applies to our public education system. Our schools perform poorly because they are monopolies, run by and funded by the government, and have no economic incentives to improve performance or otherwise hustle for their customers (i.e., students and parents who invest tax $$ into public education). Don’t like the performance of your public school? Tough. You still have to pay the property taxes to support it.
In my opinion, making some really simple changes to Colorado statutes to allow charter schools — which are currently defined as public schools and have a raft of goofy restrictions placed on them — to compete with public schools would be a step in the right direction.
Vouchers — where parents “spend/invest” their property tax dollars in the school system of choice — would be better as they would force schools to compete for education dollars. The best performing school would attract more funding in the form of more vouchers, just like businesses in the competitive market.
Just as telecom companies and airlines complained that competition would bankrupt them, the argument against vouchers is that they bad because if competition is introduced, many wealthly parents will leave the district, and the district will be left with the dregs.
However, that argument illustrates the problem with monopolies. When an entity objects to competition because its customers — who it has served for decades — will abandon it when given a choice, that entity deserves to be driven out of the market, in my view.
I’m all for competition in schools. The last time I checked, we essentially already have vouchers. State law directs the state’s student contribution into the school of choice, be it a public, magnet, or charter school. The only thing we don’t have is have the vouchers go to non-charter private schools.
While I’m not against this option entirely, the fact is that many private schools are also religious schools, and constitutionally we can’t send state funding to religious schools. As for funding non-religious private schools with tax money, that’s an option but essentially charters are already providing this — any foundation can start a charter school and run it any way and under any philosophy they choose.
So, I’m not sure what you’re proposing that we don’t already have in the current system.
A charter school receives per pupil funding, just like a public school but cannot charge tuition or assess fees. Why not let them? Why not allow a charter school to charge tuition if parents are willing to pay it for better education?
A charter school, because it is a public school, cannot limit enrollment to select groups — e.g., school for boys, school for girls, school for gifted students, school for disabled students — that could differentiate its product from traditional public schools. They can offer smaller class sizes, but that’s basically it.
An accredited private school or a homestudy course CANNOT be changed into a charter school that receives the per pupil allotment. Why not? If we already have a voucher system, this restriction would not be sensible.
The employees of a charter school are considered public employees, like other teachers. Why is that necessary? To me, having the same bureaucratic requirements and regulations for all teachers seems like something the inhibits competition and innovation rather than promoting it. For example, a medical doctor, unless he is licensed as a teacher can’t teach biology in a charter school. A judge — who can decide a death penalty case — isn’t considered qualified to teach 9th grade civics. A PhD can teach at a university, but not in high schools unless he/she jumps through the licensing requirements. That’s not competition in my view.
Under Colorado statutes, the local school district decides whether to allow a charter school in its district. If it doesn’t want the competition, it can deny the charter school application.
A charter school cannot accept students who live outside the district within which it operates. Thus, a charter school that could draw students from adjacent districts can’t do so.
For residents that do not have children, they cannot choose what school district gets their tax money.
In my view, these restrictions are not a voucher system.
I got a GREAT public school education all the way through college. My daughters all got GREAT public school educations, all the way through college.
Wonder why you must think this is a fluke or something?
I think your presumption that getting more money by competing for the bucks would make a better educational system shows the lack of understanding you have for what motivates teachers. I never heard any teacher say they went into teaching because of the potential of high income.
FULL DISCLOSURE: My mother was a master teacher for 22 years, I was a teacher for 3.
and incomplete. There are good school districts in all parts of the United States. Boulder and the southern suburbs have good school districts, as do other parts of Colorado. I don’t believe Cherry Creek schools are as good today as they were 17 years ago when my oldest son started there. I’m sure Aurora Public Schools are not as good as they were 30+ years ago when my brother, sister and I got our education there. As a society, can we afford for failed districts like Denver Public Schools to maintain the status quo just because not all districts have declined to that level? Can we afford to have a permanent underclass of uneducated citizens?
Two quotes from the Colorado Department of Education for the State of Colorado as a whole …
“The Class of 2005 had a graduation rate of 80.1 percent. This is a 2.2 percentage point decrease from the Class of 2004 rate of 82.3 percent and a 3.5 percentage point decrease over the Class of 2003 rate of 83.6 percent.” …
“The 2004-2005 school year had a dropout rate of 4.2 percent. This was a 0.4 percentage point increase from the 2003-2004 school year (3.8 percent) and a 1.8 percentage point increase from the 2002-2003 school year (2.4 percent).”
Colorado DOE basic literacy stats also indicate that only about 72% of students perform at or above grade level (which means 26% have reading/literacy skills below grade level).
2006 published CSAP results for Colorado showed 29% of tested students (grades 3-10) were rated unsatisfactory or partially proficient in reading; 29% of tested students were rated unsatisfactory or partially proficient in math; 48% of tested students were rated unsatisfactory or partially proficient in writing; and a whopping 62% of tested students were rated unsatisfactory or partially proficient in science.
These are NOT acceptable. If public schools are performing well, why do 1 out of 4 students have literacy/reading skills below grade level? Why is the drop out rate increasing and the graduation rate decreasing? The numbers of students with unsatisfactory or partially proficient scores in basic skills — reading, writing, math and science — are staggering in my view.
For me, these stats don’t evidence a public school system that’s performing well or getting better. I don’t think throwing more money at this problem will fix it. A system change is in order.
The CSAP stats I quoted were for 3d graders in Colorado.
The CSAP stats for 10th graders (who have been in public school for 7 years longer) are also discouraging:
29% of tested students (grade 10) were rated unsatisfactory or partially proficient in reading; 68% of tested students were rated unsatisfactory or partially proficient in math; 46% of tested students were rated unsatisfactory or partially proficient in writing; and a whopping 50% of tested students were rated unsatisfactory or partially proficient in science.
A higher proportion of Colorado 3d graders were deficient in science than 10th graders, but 7 extra years of public didn’t appear to improve scores in math and writing.
Are from minority and immigrant families. There’s no way anyone can reach them and improve their education short of a tripling of funds and getting the parents involved, many who could not care less.
Once you get out of the large cities with the populations as mentioned, the educational system works pretty well. And these are students who would never access vouchers – OK, some 1 or 2 percent with savvy parents.
I’ve not done a study or seen a study that attributes Colorado’s low graduation rates, increasing drop out rates and poor academic performance to minority and immigrant families.
That argument sounds like “parents of minority and immigrant students are bums who don’t want their children to suceed and those groups are inherently too dumb to be educated, so it’s OK to leave them behind.” It also sounds like an argument that our public school system shouldn’t worry about educating minority students. I don’t think you or any other reasonable/responsible citizen really believe that.
I live in the sticks, outside of the large cities, with virtually no minority/immigrant students. The school here performs worse than statewide averages by most measures, so based on that one piece of anecdotal evidence, I’m not sure the argument that everything works fine in rural areas is valid.
I think education is THE most important investment one can make in themselves or their family. As responsible citizen of Colorado, we should be outraged at the performance of our public schools and the numbers of Colorado children who being left behind.
In my opinion, however, throwing more money at the system in the hopes that it will right itself is a foolish solution.
The number of minority students dropping out in Colorado urban centers is bad. A 2004 Harvard / Urban Institute Civil Rights Project study says “the graduation rates among African-American and Latino students in Denver are among the lowest in the nation, 38.6% and 30.5% respectively, versus 50.2% and 53.2% nationally. Annually, over 2,000 Denver high school students drop out of the Denver Public School system.”
Rural school districts face other factors, which you know well. The ‘brain drain’ from the community, the difficulty in attracting teachers, limited funding for schools because of limited students and infrastructure issues.
I like what you say about competition in the education world. I’ve worried for years that vouchers or similar measures would ruin public education, but I am coming around to doing something beyond throwing more money at the problem.
The statistics you cite, if applied generally across the state, would account all on their own for much of Colorado’s testing and dropout results. If the system isn’t catching these people now, what is a private system going to accomplish? Do you intend to have private schools form a posse to go out and round up truant students, or get their parents to come to terms with the fact that education is important to the future of their child?
I should have made clear the stats were for Denver.
Private school posses – now there’s an idea. Parents whose job it is to round up the little ankle biters who are ditching school and bring ’em back.
No, of course I’m not advocating that. I’m advocating for a change. A change in how teachers are paid, as you referred to in a previous post. A change in how schools do business (having public schools become more competitive by reaching out to the communities, for example). We could make curriculums stricter in schools, addressing basics and less electives. We could allow stricter discipline in the classrooms.
We could do a lot of things and we need to. I’m tired of seeing friends and colleagues move to the suburbs here in Denver for the sole reason that the schools in Denver suck.
I looked up Gilpin county’s school districts’ records and y’all are doing alright up there. Parsing mentioned earlier that he and his children got great public school educations, with the caveat that he and his parents were teachers – well, duh, of course public ed worked out for him. If I send my kids to the schools in my neighborhood, they’ll get an education because both my wife and I give a damn – but they’ll also be exposed to gangs, poor instruction, burnt out teachers, outdated facilities and overwhelmed principles.
Why are we Dems so adverse to trying something different?! I read an article a few months back about Romanoff’s plan for revamping Colorado’s educational system and it sounded like a good start. I haven’t heard anything since, except a large number of proposals to spend more money.
The schools that need it most are the schools that are suffering the most: DPS and other troubled districts. The new DPS contract makes some progress on a few fronts, but it doesn’t address inflexibility or environmental issues like gangs or parental problems.
We all need to sit down and discuss the situation; like Dave, I’m against vouchers that subsidize schools wanting more money from people who can afford them. I’m open to charters, magnets, more open contracts, and just about anything else…
You’re right. There’s room for the parties to work something out and there’s room to move forward. I’m out there going to meetings and touring schools and yadda yadda but what frustrates me is the lack of vision from the electeds, the state and the locals that results in nothing. Not only the lack of vision but the lack of will to implement it.
Everything moves slowly and that is frustrating but good. The issue of education, however, is different and shouldn’t be a political football for the parties to boot around. Our future belongs to these kids whom we are failing today (how’s that for my Bette Midler closing…).
This seems like a very bad idea, politically speaking, for the Dems. The freeze has already passed. The Repubs were left arguing that a freeze that was already passes was really a tax hike that people should be mad about. Now everyone will be talking about actual tax hikes that might yet be enacted. How does this not hurt the Dems?
Imagine my surprise when I was cleaning up from my weekend and I saw that headline in the Prespective section of the Post. The author, Professor Robert Hardaway of D.U., concludes with this:
“Devoting more property tax revenues will only increase the monthly payments of Colorado homeowners and increase our already devastating foreclosure rates, especially among the poor. The one thing it will not do is improve our public schools.” Wow! In the Post! From an academic! Pinch me, I must be dreaming!
Here is the entire piece.
http://www.denverpos…
but Lauren posted this last week in a diary. She’s always out in front of us anyway. The article deserves repeating.
1) Public schools tend to work quite well when the parents of the students going to the school are well off and well educated. That’s why some schools in Boulder are as good as the best private schools.
There are a ton of reasons for this from education that occurs at home to parents making kids study to helping with homework. One of my daughters had a 7th grade math teacher that knew nothing about math (truly nothing). So I taught her math that year as did most other parents in our area. But the kids who’s parents weren’t engaged or didn’t know enough math to help – they were screwed.
2) You can’t allow tuition for charter or private schools because then you will have schools that require $5,000.00/year on top of the state money and they become subsidized schools for the rich. I’ll accept vouchers where schools must accept that as full payment but allowing students to buy in with state money as an assist just further stratifies schools.
3) Charter schools do not have the same employment guidelines as public schools. They do not offer tenure and they set their own pay rates. They do have some requirements that are the same but those tend to be to insure that employees are treated legally.
4) The drop-out rate in the Denver public schools is over 50% by high school graduation. For every 2 18 year olds in Denver, only 1 graduates. The other drops out somewhere along the line. This is horriffic.
5) Money helps. But the most critical components are in order: the parents, the teacher(s), and the principal. Everyone knows this but there is no real effort made to help and educate parents or to improve or replace sub-standard teachers and principals.
I would like to see a solution that bundles additional monies with specific workable laws that will address the key issues – parents, teachers, and principals.
– dave
You said “Everyone knows this but there is no real effort made to help and educate parents or to improve or replace sub-standard teachers and principals.”
This brought to mind Lily Tomlin’s character, Ernestine, who worked as an operator at the telephone company. Here’s a transcript of her routine from an ancient Saturday Night Live:
“We handle eighty-four billion calls a year. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to the scum of the earth. We realize that every so often you can’t get an operator, for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order, or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn’t make.
We don’t care.
Watch this.. [ she hits buttons maniacally ] ..just lost Peoria.
You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can’t handle it. But that’s your problem, isn’t it? Next time you complain about your phone service, why don’t you try using two Dixie cups with a string?
We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the Phone Company.”
Lily’s routine is funny because it illustrates what happens when there is a monopoly provision of service. In my view, we have the same problems with our education system in Colorado. We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the school system.
I’m normally a very pro-union person, but this is one area where the unions have to get with the program: teachers are there to teach while making a salary, not just to collect a salary.
Schools aren’t devoid of pressure to excel; in the public sector, the public provides the equivalent of competitive pressure. In Colorado, that’s through the School Board, the District Advisory Committee, and the State Board of Education; standardized testing, grading results, and other reporting measures allow all of these bodies to react properly and in a timely manner. Unless and until, that is, the means of exerting that pressure are denied.
If tenure terms deny you the ability to fire a teacher for real shortcomings in performance, your hands are tied. If government regulations unnecessarily limit you from using an effective teaching or managing method, you cannot expect excellence. And if budgetary concerns prevent you from hiring the best teachers, using modern texts and equipment, and working in buildings in good repair, then you will get sub-standard results.
Too much government regulation and inflexible contract terms – from the left, the right, and the unions – combine with parent apathy and environmental pressures. A private system won’t solve the latter two, and the former can be resolved with a reasoned discussion.
The Ward Churchill fiasco illustrates what’s wrong with the employment-for-life model in Colorado’s public education system.
He’s been in the news — generating universally bad press for the University of Colorado — for two or three years. From what I’ve read in the papers, there are numerous grounds for firing him, yet, the University can’t buck itself up to fire him. They are mired in the tenure system and indecision.
Headlines from a couple days ago were that the President agreed to fire Churchill, but he punted the decision to the Regents. Having the Regents make the firing decision is like the Board of Directors at Citibank making hiring and firing decisions of call center employees.
In private industry, Churchill would have been fired long ago. In my experience, if a firing manager was worried about legal consequences, he’d call in his lawyer ask for advice and act. Imagine a GE or Exxon, Microsoft, or Verizon or any private sector firm tolerating the bad press of an employee like Churchill and continuing to employ such an individual.
Throwing more public tax money to support such a system in hopes that it will get better seems insane to me.
but a bit subtler. Though slightly exaggerated, the dominant dynamic is as follows: The district superintendant cares primarily about having their contract renewed/not being fired by the school board (and those below them seek the same outcome from the superintendant, continued on down the ladder to teachers and principles). To accomplish this, the superintendant is focused entirely on appearances, and substance only to the extent that it is the most efficient, convenient, and safe way to maintain appearances (which it very often isn’t).
Meanwhile, (many) school board members are on the school board as a stepping stone to higher elected office (e.g., dog catcher, whatever). They want to have something on their resume while acquiring no negative name-recognition. To avoid negative name-recognition, they don’t want to draw unnecessary attention to the school district they represent by publicizing its failings, especially its administrative incompetence and the petty politics which dominate the decision-making process throughout the system. In other words, they, too, value form over substance, appearances over realities.
Thus there is an implicit, perhaps often unrecognized symbiosis by which the superindendant (and the administrative staff below her, hired with the job description -sometimes explicitly stated- to make her look good) and the board of education avoid improving the system for which they are responsible. They will rush to put out fires if it becomes a public issue, but they will not spark the mechanisms necessary to deliver the best quality services for fear of accidentally igniting any fires.
The monopoly, which, more importantly, has no clearly defined product, nor indices by which to measure the quality of the output (CSAP being a first, clumsy attempt to remedy that, rife with problems of its own), is neither disciplined by the market, nor by well-informed dissatisfaction by its one corporate-client, the public. (The public, on the whole, often has a shallow notion of what high quality education means -for instance, to many, it means that their son or daughter always should get A’s- and so often demands form over substance themselves, making the accidental conspiracy complete).