Education loaded down with too many layers

At least in multilevel schemes, there is the semblance of a product; in education, legislators acknowledge they have none but keep investing our money in the scheme anyway. If you stand back and look at what we call an educational structure, it seems to resemble a multilevel marketing scheme where everyone skims a little off the top (a k a overhead) starting with the state school board, the locals, and the study committees, until we get to the bottom of the food chain where the customers — students, parents and taxpayers — get nothing but a bill.

How you define a problem is how you define the solution. We continue to define the problem with education as lack of funding; and, therefore, the solution becomes more money. The "stakeholders" — the bureaucrats and the special interest groups who fear change, and want to keep the status quo — have indoctrinated our elected leaders. Then, there are those who think public education is not working, so they want to privatize it for their children. Both are simple solutions that keep us from the tough challenge of making public education work, for all students, in our democratic society.

Our gubernatorial candidates seem to have received their "orientation" already and are parroting the same old solution — more money. When the only solution we see to the problem of education is more money, and we keep complaining about it, then failing becomes tantamount to saying, "the operation was a success, but the patient died." That's what the stakeholders want to happen so that nothing changes. Andy Grove, Intel's CEO, captures it well: "Senior managers got to where they are by having been good at what they do — so it's not surprising that they will keep implementing the same strategic and tactical moves that worked for them during the course of their careers. I call this phenomenon the inertia of success. It is extremely dangerous."

The system we have is overloaded with needless bureaucratic layers, from legislative committees to state and local boards that serve to dilute the responsibility to the point that no one can be held responsible. They serve only to protect the incumbents to make sure "nothing happens on my watch," while giving the appearance of "shared governance and local control."