I came home last night feeling like I'd been run over by a steamroller, which is not entirely atypical, but this was a really BIG steamroller! I was way too worn-out to think of anything to write about. By bedtime, it became apparent that there was some kind of bug coursing through me (really?--you mean you can pick up illnesses working in an enclosed space with 1000 teenagers inside?), but by this morning it had pretty well run its course. Today was a good day.

But here's my dilemma. I'm really grateful to the nine people who are contributing to this blog--your insights are supportive and substantial. But I don't know how to turn this site into a full-blown war-zone, which is what it really needs to be if any of the crackpots who are doing the decision-making about education in our country today are going to join in and, hopefully, learn that there are a lot of people out here who have a lot better ideas than they have. I need to figure out a way to get lots and lots of teachers to weigh in on this site, otherwise it's doomed to be just this one off-the-deep-end teacher way the hell out in some state no one's ever heard of sounding off about public education to the temporary amusement of nine or ten readers ( for whom, again, I'm eternally grateful). Not only would teachers from different backgrounds lend differing viewpoints to this, I'm sure they'd find a way in the process to find better ways to say what I'm trying to say, too.
Fox Business Channel is airing a special tonight about the funding of public education led by "investigative reporter" John Stossel. In it, Stossel promises to demonstrate how over the last many years, we've been throwing more and more money at public education that isn't being translated into better results. So far, I'm sure most of us would agree with him. But he's going to go on to say that the main culprits behind this problem are teacher's unions and teacher tenure. And he's going to base this on his "investigative reporting." Obviously, then, he is investigating only a handful of large city districts where there is a lot of union entrenchment and abuse of teacher tenure. But if he's going to make such absurd observations, Mr. Stossel needs to truly investigate education in the U.S.. Were he to do so, he would find that those places where such circumstances occur constitute a ridiculously tiny minority of the collection of districts throughout the country. He is right that we're putting money into education that isn't being spent wisely. But if he wants to know where the real spending abuses exist AND find out how the money could be put to better use, I wish he'd just come and ask me! I'd be happy to tell him what I'm going to tell you now: our billions of tax dollars are being inefficiently spent because they're going toward 1) top-heavy district administrations (which, of course, command the highest salaries in every district), 2) programmed instruction (which is outrageously expensive and doesn't generally improve the quality of education), and 3) standardized testing (which is also outrageously expensive and inefficient as a measure of quality of education). You want to see that money spent more efficiently and see it reap absolutely magical (I promise! I'd bet my life on it!) results? Spend it on contracting more teachers (without raising their salaries, even) in order to radically reduce the number of students in every classroom. My wife has classes numbering more than FORTY! Ensure that classes are to number no more than twenty students per class--and hold rigorously to that number (which means hiring more teachers)--and you will be astonished at the results in a very short period of time. It wouldn't be hard for John Stossel to do a little investigative reporting about that--but it certainly wouldn't make for many advertising dollars if he did. And that, as we all know, is the bottom line underscoring "investigative reporting" on television.