When the state auditor’s report became public yesterday, it was reported prominently in the regional TV media. Fox 8 has a good summary.
It is quite clear that the school system in Forsyth County has been badly mismanaged.
There are two possibilities to explain this mismanagement. The first is that the leadership there is incompetent. The second is that they were intentionally behaving in this manner, expecting the taxpayers to bail them out and fund them at a higher level.
Two aspects are interesting. The first is that they acted as if the Covid-related monies would be incessant and ongoing. The second is that they expected to continue to fund the system at higher levels despite a marked reduction in students.
As citizens, we need to be very skeptical and vigilant about our public schools systems because they comprise a huge chunk of state and local taxes. But these systems tend to be very impervious and opaque and resistant to oversight. Perhaps the General Assembly needs to act.
Yes indeed. Time to use a buggy whip to these buffoons. The education establisment has been corrupt, anywhere you look, for decades.
A report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes referred to as the nation’s report card, is a devastating assessment of the condition of our nation’s schools. In short, there has been virtually no educational progress with our nation’s children in more than 30 years – and urban districts are the worst performers.
In public education, we reward mediocrity and discourage excellence. It’s no wonder our students fail to learn. A teacher cannot be fired for poor performance. Consequently, evaluations have little or no meaning. Not only can teachers not be fired, but incompetent teachers will actually make more money next year as they gain another year of seniority and an automatic raise. In other words, mediocrity is rewarded, and excellence is not.
In short, in public education, we obtain leadership by accident rather than by design, which may help explain how principals could possibly rate 99 percent of their teachers as effective when 95 percent of the students fail to reach proficiency. This is just another example of mediocre leadership coupled with a lack of accountability. Sadly, a similar scenario also plays out at the superintendent level.
This lack of accountability is not limited to personnel but applies also to the expenditure of education funds. Virtually all public school systems are measured on whether money is spent as specified by the state or federal government funding agency rather than on whether the money was spent effectively to actually enhance educational achievement.
To make matters worse, public schools receive funding regardless of performance. Every year, more money is demanded, with no corresponding demands that student learning performance improve. In other words, just as educators receive an annual pay raise regardless of their performance, K-12 public schools continue to cost taxpayers more, with little to show for the ever-increasing spending. At best, the status quo is maintained. Yet often the result is worse.
Thanks, Fred, for some great comments. Right on target. The question is whether this system is “fixable”.
Fred, as you describe it accurately, it is an inherently corrupt system. All the perverse dynamics and incentives and unaccountability typical of government. We need a “wall of separation” between govt and the minds of our children.
It is interesting, J. Sobran, that the children will have no awareness of the wrongful acts of these system leaders in the name of educating them. They will have no awareness that wall ought to be there. They are the pawns being manipulated.
$75 million in bonuses to public school teachers who graduate students that can’t read, add, subtract, or write a complete sentence.
And they wonder why parents prefer private education??
And just as in Guilford County, JayCee, they don’t reduce staff, cut expenses or close schools when their student population contracts in size. Seems to be a pattern.
The punishment for malfeasance on the part of those running the Forsyth Co. schools should not be inflicted on the already stepped-upon Forsyth taxpayer (just had a huge tax increase). A lot of people got money they shouldn’t have last over the past 12 months. Reductions in spending to balance the books should fall upon them. Such rationality is unlikely in Uniparty-run Forsyth Co.
This is a better report with a graph showing the substantial increase in employees [probably educrats rather than teachers] over the course of the dropping student population:
https://www.carolinajournal.com/winston-salem-forsyth-schools-facing-dire-46m-budget-gap/
I wonder, J. Sobran, if the folks running that school system knew precisely what they were doing; and fully expected to ask for and receive more taxpayer money. That would not surprise me even though enrollments were declining. After all, it is how things always worked in the past.