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In response to the comments of my good friends thediscourser and supergoober, I do want to mention a bit of my intent in introducing the numbers. Unfortunately what I said was hastily written as I was about to go out (as is this), but I will attempt to clarify what I was saying. As I reread my post, and the responses, I realized that I did not define terms well. It is a fact that in this state, with a 68 billion dollar budget and 6.2 million kids, we do technically spend $11,000 per kid. What I failed to mention is my main problem with this, which is very similar to the issue that thediscourser raised. It is true that at the classroom level, only about $6000 per kid is disbursed. So what we really have is an educational system that is shackled with layer upon layer of federal, state, and local bureaucracies that consumes close to fifty percent of the total expenditures. This is, to my mind, absolutely insane. While we do need several aspects of administration, in our current public education system, I would argue that there are many expenditures that have little, if anything to do with actually educating our kids. Couple that with societal norms that show no value in education, deification of idiocy (pop stars, athletes, movies, "My Super Sweet Sixteen", etc), and an absence of family structure to promote advancement through hard work, and it is pretty easy to see how we got the mess in which we are currently enmeshed.

Do I have any solutions? Well, no not really. We should incrementally try to introduce my version of the principle of parsimony for bureaucracies. The principle of parsimony in science and philosophy is that you should not multiply entities beyond necessity. I don't know if it has ever been used in this sense, but if I am to coin it for this, then so be it. In the most efficient use of resources, problems are addressed as close to the source as possible. In education, for example, in a dispute between a teacher and a student (about a grade, for example), the teacher should handle it, if at all possible. If this is still unsatisfactory, the administrator must step in to handle it. The administrator, who must be involved in the day-to-day running of the school, should not be making classroom decisions that a competent teacher could make (though he/she might have to make the call on whether said teacher actually fits the criteria of being a competent teacher). This is much like the chain of command for an efficient military, and while I am not saying that the schools should be run like the military, I am advocating for less micromanagement. This would go a long way to solving much of the problems with the schools but will likely never happen because of the amount of people in government invested in the system staying as it is.

As to how to address the family situation, I have a number of possible proposals for that, but that is for another time. So for know, lets dub this "new" principle - theprofessor principle - that is, micromanage as little as possible. The leaders of a school provide vision and direction for the school, with an eye on serving their community, the teachers and students are responsible for implementing that vision.

And yes, I am living in a fantasy world ;)

johndrake6