Educational Spending
For some strange reason when people are promoted out of the classroom to become bureaucrats they change. I have never been sure if this is for good or ill. They become enamored of change and innovation for its own sake. This school year we received a new curriculum for Early Childhood language arts. It is very nice, with great books and lessons. We all got together for two days of training on the new curriculum, that means that substitutes had to be paid to take our classes. When I get back to school with the new curriculum, 12 (one for each month) shrink wrapped packages pre hole punched to fit in 3 ring binders, I’m looking for a place to put them.
I go to the bookkeeper who is the keeper of all school supplies, she says “Peters you are the 4th. person to ask me for a dozen 3 ring binders, I don’t have any”. I go back to my new classroom, having just moved over from the 5th. grade, part of what is there is mine, part is what is left from the departing teacher. I spot a set of 3 ring binders on the top of a cabinet, jackpot!
I figure I can throw what is in them away and put in the new curriculum. Imagine my surprise when I look inside and find the first iteration of my new curriculum, complete with like new books. Yes the entire 12 volume set, hardly used, sitting on the shelf gathering dust. Our classrooms are littered with the remnants of curriculum past; some not out of the box, all expensive. This waste is replicated in every classroom in the school system. When I hear people talk about how expensive education is and I think of the enormous amount of waste, I, and many of my colleagues just shake our heads.
They bought us a reading program a while back; Kindergarten through 3rd grade. The first year it was the sacred cow, nothing was allowed to move during reading time. The second year almost the same but along about the third or fourth things started to loosen up. Soon it was business as usual, you no longer had to schedule your reading time first thing in the morning, they made announcements during the reading block, people would walk into your room and interrupt you during reading. So the reading series, like so many, many, other things slowly faded into the background and finally disappeared. Many of us still have the teacher books on our shelves and for some children who are struggling with reading it works pretty well.
It is a sorry state indeed, that classroom teachers go begging for things they need or buy it out of their own pocket, while the bureaucrats are profligate with the taxpayer’s money.