The Brits may finally have had enough

This story caught my attention from the Daily Telegraph (free registration) in London. It seems that California is not the only government who can't seem to get the money from the tax payer to the classroom.

Unfortunately, state schools cannot afford to provide a decent education, since so much of that money never gets to them. It is dissipated in the panoply of penpushers in central or local bureaucracy, schools inspectors and consultants, all anxious to help, and all getting in the way of the employee at the chalkface. Add that to the classroom impotence against pupils whose only knowledge is of their human rights, and it's a miracle there are any teachers left.

I seem to recall a quote by President Lincoln, he said that sending troops to the front line is like shovelling fleas across the barnyard, only half of them get there.

Why do we have the State department of education, the County office of education, the school districts and finally the school? It is no wonder where they money gets siphened off to.

Why all the layers of bureaucracy? I have worked with many County Offices of Ed, Districts and individual Schools in my business. In the IT field, there are many schools where the COE handles the entire network, the school is so small the cannot afford an IT person. Some Districts have their own Network Administrators, and some schools have an on-site Network Admin staff. I have seen districts where the turf wars over the network is very heated.

I have seen a huge amount of waste in the IT field. Some schools have network infrastructure that most small and mid-sized businesses would love to have. Other small districts and schools are living with technology held together with baling wire and bubble gum. I can't tell you how many times I have seen hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on network infrastructure so the teachers can get email and surf the web. Especially in elementary and middle schools. Some schools do a phenomenal job using technology, most do not.

One of the places where technology was being used in an elementary school ,was in a small farm community in the central valley. The school had used grants and federal dollars to build a solid network, but it was the principal and his leadership that drove the use of technology on that campus. The school was in a very poor part of the State, most of the students were children of farm workers, but they learned computer skills and english. Not because someone from the outside made them do it, not from the teachers union, it came from the drive and vision of a staff where the kids came first.

Someone once told me that if you find problems in a huge place because you know something about a certain subject, just imagine how many other problems there are.