I've seen studies that show the amount of money spent actually TEACHING the child ranks very low in the world. We apparently throw all our money at multiple levels of administrators who may never spend a single day with students.
It's what gets me so fired up on this subject. On one hand we all think teachers are heroes and should be treated like heroes. But then we treat them like window licking retards by placing a ton of administration over them who dictate how and what they may teach. And we pay those administrators the hero's wage.
Its more than just administration costs though. Fancy new tech gadgets that 'make learning easier' can get tons of funding with little actual science or pedagogy behind it while tried and true methods are left in the dust. LA spent over a
billion dollars on its failed iPad program. There seems to be pressure on schools to do more than just teach the material at hand as time spent on classroom management or dealing with unhappy parents has gone up. They see technology as the solution and throw money at it. Technology looks 'cool' and 'high end' if you're trying to woo kids to your district or want to reflect the 'prestige' of your school and wow parents (who just so happen to vote for the school board members often starting these initiatives). Having appropriately involved parents, involved students, decent class sizes and high expectations doesn't sell nearly as well - it sounds too much like effort and personal responsibility.
Some schools face an additional issue with the distribution of funding - at least in the poorest areas of MI where my wife taught for many years. Poor performing schools tend to have teachers who don't live in the area - they are willing to make additional sacrifices to have their kids go to a different school which typically means living out of that district. The service and maintenance workers tend to live in the same district as the school they work at. In one particular instance 70% of the teachers didn't live in the district while 90% of service and maint staff did. When it came time to contract renewals guess who got the larger salary increase or larger staff sizes? The people who lived in the district and voted in the school board. So a first year 'Dispatcher' or 'Parts Clerk' made $37,000 and a first year teacher made $35,500. First year 'Day Maintenance' worker made $32,000. I'm not trying to disparage the work those people do as their job is vital to the smooth operation of a school. But are they more valuable or almost as valuable to a schools successful operation as a teacher? My hope is that this was just something that happened in SE MI but I suspect it is broader than that.
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