Looks Like I'm Not Alone Here

Yesterday, in the dress code post, I mentioned how some top school administrators tended to make new rules just to look like they're doing something. I've mentioned before that I'm no fan of bureaucracy of any kind, and this really seems to cause problems when school districts spend all kinds of money on high-priced administrators who never even see the inside of a classroom.

Today, there was a column by Scott Parks in the Dallas Morning News that spoke to this; he recently asked educators to email him with ways that school districts could save money, and one response stood out to me:

Teachers seem to believe their school districts have become top-heavy with over-paid administrators who don't contribute to classroom progress.

"For one day, I would like to sit in the administration building and see what these highly paid staffers do," one teacher wrote.

As always, read the whole thing.

Now, I'm not trying to make it open season on administrators here. As I said yesterday, most of them didn't go into teaching thinking they'd end up this way. Unfortunately, moving "up" into the administrative ranks seems to be the only way to make good money in education. But can the tide be turned? Will budgets get so tight that some districts will realize that they don't need the Associate Vice Superintendent for Curriculum Development in the Northeast Quadrant, and then put that person back in the classroom (or--if they don't actually have the talent to teach--let them go, and use their salary to pay five new teachers)? We can only hope...

In case you missed it last year: Happy Dyngus Day! Sounds like a fun tradition...