Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Educators Run Wild; Parents Co-conspirators

Post lifted from Democracy Project -- which see for links

Any industry in which costly resource inputs increase at a faster rate than the economic and social value of outputs is considered inefficient. While academics and politicians, not to mention ordinary citizens, impacted by the rising cost of health care rile about the strain on resources and alternative spending objectives, calling in various guises for greater efficiency of delivery, the value of outputs is not seriously disputed by either statistics or common experience - number served, treatment improvements, cures. Yet, the "higher education" industry is not near similarly critically examined.

Census data shows that the number of undergraduate students enrolled in universities, colleges and community colleges increased 75% from 8.1 million in 1975 to 14.2 million in 2005, graduate students increased by 50% from 1.6 million to 2.4 million, while the number of faculty increased 93% from 622-thousand to 1.2 million in 2003. Accompanying this disproportionate increase in faculty has been a decrease in tenure granted and slowing salary increases.

The American Association of University Professors properly points out that institutions of higher learning are spending a higher proportion of their budgets on facilities, as the proportion spent on faculty declines. Most campuses and dormitories are far more lavish than a generation or two previously. I don't recall where I saw the statistic, but the California state colleges and universities spend about 75% of their budgets on fixed assets. That means that expense constraints must fall upon faculty salaries and student tuition. The AAUP, however, does not focus on the vastly increased supply of graduate students and PhD's, whose only employment is within higher ed, as a downward pressure of staff salaries.

Still, higher education costs are, nevertheless, increasing at a faster rate than the rest of the states' budgets. In California, for example, its legislative analyst notes that General Fund spending is slated to increase about 1% but University of California and California State University spending is slated to increase about 6%.

Like any union, faculty demand higher salaries, but conveniently omit certain elements of compensation, like short work schedules, or few classes taught, or generous fringe benefits. The California legislative analyst, for example, says:

The CPEC's [California Postsecondary Education Commission] faculty salary reports only measure base salaries. Faculty typically receive various other forms of compensation as well, including retirement and health benefits, sabbaticals, housing allowances, and bonuses. Several studies commissioned by the segments have found that the nonsalary benefits provided to UC and CSU faculty are worth considerably more than the average of their comparison institutions. In fact, when all forms of compensation are considered, UC and CSU appear to be at or above their comparison averages.

The U.S. Department of Education provides average fringe benefits of full-time instructional faculty at Title IV degree-granting institutions for the 2005-6 academic year: (figures rounded)

Retirement Plan $6-thousand
Social Security contribution by employer $4.3-thousand
Medical/Dental Plans $6.5-thousand
Life, Disability & Other Insurance $1.6-thousand
Tuition for dependents $4.3-thousand
Housing plan $5.6-thousand
Unemployment & Workers Compensation $0.7-thousand
Other benefits in kind with cash options $1.5-thousand

Total = $30.5-thousand of average fringe benefits, above salaries.

Certainly not all higher education educators are garnering this average, but for it to be an average many are. One can argue all day long about how a college degree is today's high school diploma, but I don't notice much improvement in restaurant waiters' and waitress' service as college grads fill non-educated roles. Careers are bright for those with technical and professional skills, but many other majors are economically worthless.

But, it's among the faculty, overwhelmingly liberal or radical in their politics, that this gross inefficiency of higher education inputs is most felt. Their economic security is declining compared to yesteryear, and the value to anyone but themselves of (politely speaking) esoteric humanities curriculums is negligible. Among many, their resulting alienation, although self-created by their own life choices, results in resentments against a relatively rich society, against business and free enterprise accomplishment, against America and Western civilization.

The accomplices, even from conservative homes, are the parents who agree to shell out up to tens of thousands of dollars a year for their cuddled children to take such basket-weaving courses and enjoy country club campuses. The cure for higher education lays in elimination and avoidance of useless majors and academics, the revolt of taxpayers and parents, and continuation of present trends which place a compensation worth on academics that will decline more compared to other occupations. It will also do much to help cure America of its naysayers, negativists, and internal enemies of cultural and national security survival.





Racial integration and diversity unpopular in black Seattle school

A school so pathetic that it can only handle dumb blacks. Whites not welcome. One gets the strong impression that the white school Principal actively dislikes having whites on her patch -- perhaps because they are less liklely to bow down before her

A large photo of smiling children hangs at the entrance of Madrona K-8. Superimposed across their faces is the caption: "This is who we are." Most of the children in the photograph are African American.

A block away, a different portrait emerges - that of a gentrified neighborhood where residents meet to chat at the corner bakery and young mothers push strollers along a main street of small shops and restaurants. On any given day, most of them are white.

In recent years, the school at the center of this neighborhood in Seattle's Central Area has undergone its own gentrification of sorts, as small numbers of middle-class white families began enrolling their children in a school that remains largely black and persistently poor. The resulting conflict spotlights a challenge the Seattle School District faces as it tries to attract and keep middle- and upper-middle-class families, while intensifying efforts to help disadvantaged students achieve.

Some parents, even before their own children were old enough for Madrona, had tried to improve the school. That left some parents with children already at the school bristling at the suggestion that somehow it wasn't good enough. The newer parents helped revive the Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA), started after-school programs and volunteered in classrooms. But in the end, some gave up, saying they didn't feel welcome, and last fall, several withdrew their children.

Madrona's principal, Kaaren Andrews, believes some left because, ultimately, they were uncomfortable with the school's racial balance. And she believes some of their expectations were unreasonable in a school whose most pressing priority is to help disadvantaged students succeed. Some supporters of the principal agree, saying some who left expected private-school extras at an inner-city public school. The result is a clash that speaks to race and class and achievement - where everyone seems to want what's best for the children yet is divided over how to get it.

In this school of 442 students, about 75 percent are black, 11 percent are white, and the others are of other races.

The hurt feelings are so widespread that the head of the PTSA asked Mayor Greg Nickels for help and the school district agreed to pay for a facilitator to bring the sides together. The result was a meeting Tuesday night that drew about 175 past, present and future Madrona parents who, in often emotional comments, tackled the issue of race at the school. They spoke of Madrona K-8's role in meeting the wide-ranging needs of all their children. Some white parents talked of wanting to feel that a school only blocks from their homes could be a place where their children could get a well-rounded education and where they could feel welcome donating their time. Some black parents pointed out that their ethnicity is appreciated at a school like Madrona and expressed concerns over white families changing the school in the same way they've changed the neighborhood.

Ed Taylor, University of Washington dean of undergraduate academic affairs, helped establish a partnership between the school and the university. In an earlier conversation, Taylor said, "Here, you have an interesting confluence where kids living in Section 8 [low-income] housing are brought together with what might be the children of Microsoft millionaires. There are fundamental questions for that neighborhood: Can you thoughtfully have a multiracial school in which the needs of all kids are being met?" ....

Orser, who is white, has lived in the neighborhood 12 years. He had gone to school in Baltimore with children of all races and income levels, knew the racial mix at Madrona and wanted that for his kids, too. He became active in the school three years before his eldest was enrolled. He was among those who helped revive the PTSA, serving as its treasurer for four years and volunteering in classrooms.

But in the end, he said, he never felt welcomed. Orser said the principal seemed to dismiss suggestions for reducing class sizes or incorporating art and music programs into the curriculum - something he felt would benefit all children. "We had financial resources and people with all kinds of skills willing to help," Orser said. "It was clear she didn't want our money and was reluctant to give us direction."

Disillusioned, Orser transferred his son at the start of this school year to Lowell Elementary School, where he tested into the gifted program. "The saddest day of my last 10 years was the day I realized my son would no longer be at Madrona - despite everything I'd put into it."

In the fall, two years after Andrews came to Madrona, nine families with those or other concerns followed him out of the school, withdrawing 11 students in all. They were allowed to transfer under a federal law that requires the district to offer them a choice of other Seattle schools because so few of Madrona's fourth-graders passed the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) last year.

They were among 21 families - professionals and stay-at-home moms, double-income spouses and single parents, black families and white - who wrote letters to the district expressing a variety of concerns. Some live a block or two from the school, others live on the neighborhood fringe. They wrote of crowded classrooms, harried teachers and other problems not necessarily unique to Madrona. Some said that as the school focuses on the basics of math, reading and writing to ensure students pass the WASL, it denies others a richer educational experience.

But several of the white parents expressed less-tangible unease - that the administration seemed intent on keeping the school predominantly black. A few have all but accused the school's white principal of being racist against them. The sense of rejection some were feeling was confirmed by an e-mail sent to a parent that appeared to come from vice principal Brad Brown. It admitted that the school intentionally misassessed a white student's reading skills to rid the school of his family and others critical of the administration, then bade them a "wonderful educational experience aboard the Mayflower."

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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