I've found a disturbing trend in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. Student enrollment has remained essentially the same each year for the last twenty years, around 15,000 students. The number of teachers has remained about the same, usually just under 1,000 (this number actually includes teachers, counselors, and librarians.) The disturbing trend is that District Administrators have more than doubled in the last 10 years. There were 8 District Administrators in 1990 to and there were still 8 in 2000. Now there are 18. And although teachers and students have remained roughly the same, support staff has roughly doubled from 402 in 1990 to 817 in 2009.
The numbers of the people that are really needed when it comes to education (students and teachers) have remained about the same for 20 years. Yet in those same twenty years every other class of employees in the school district doubled (except for principals and assistant principals which has remained about the same.) And even though student enrollment has remained about the same, four schools have been built since 1990 and now the District is complaining about overcrowding. Remember this the next time the school district comes crying for money and help.
Vote Michael Ames for School Board if you want someone on the School Board that will fight to reduce the district administration and return power to the teachers, parents, students and local communities.
Good to know, does this have anything to do with the inundation of special needs type prescriptions? I know and realize there are legitimate special needs but then I also believe there are many instances where children are diagnosed and medicated simply because they don't fit in right at the schools (and sometimes even homes -- ie. a normal child is seen as hyperactive). I own a excellent book on this topic by Chris Mercogliano titled Teaching the Restless: One School's Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed. Published in 2003 He writes:
ReplyDelete"The controversy over ADHD (I would now add Autism as well) is a reflection of the issue's complexity. Many of the children in this country labeled with ADHD have nothing wrong with them at all. The trouble lies in school environments that fail to support their unique needs and natures. Other labeled children exhibit early learning difficulties that are not organic in origin but are caused by forcing academics on them before they are ready, willing, and able to invest themselves in the learning process. Still others have real problems coping with life both in and outside school. However, it is my belief that they are not suffering from an organic disorder. Rather, their dysfunctional and antisocial behaviors are distress signals: symptomatic expressions of unmet needs and emotional turbulence--not disease."
To me, the information you just provided and what I’ve learned through other studies is a tell on the dysfunction of our society as a whole, not just our schools. Mercagliano also points out, “Though there are virtually no comprehensive statistics, it is estimated that anywhere from 15 to 20 percent of American boys are currently taking methylphenidate, more commonly known as Ritalin, or other stimulant drugs to control their behavior in school.”
I know you have an “outside the box” perspective on education that needs to be included on our local School Board. Same thinking is only going to turn out the same old tired and failed solutions. I am aware that special needs prescriptions are a big funder but I question it’s extensive need. I believe there are better and even tried and true solutions to our current educational failures that need to be used. A great educational leader once wrote, “…most of us recognize that the public school often fails, in that it launches the average and dull boy ignorant upon the world because the curriculum has been too narrow to make any appeal to him...”
Clearly, if teachers are free to personalize the educational experience for each child instead of always having to “teach to the test” they will be able to appeal to and invoke a love of learning in their students that teachers are not able to do now with all the “standardization” and “no child left behind” regulations bogging them down.
As I reread your post I realize the special needs point is relevant but I think it is really the "standardization" and "no child left behind" mandates driving the bureaucracy in our schools. Either way, I recognize that our FNSBSD is in sore need of your service if only to educate, as I am sure ignorance is a big reason for the problems in school and out of it.
The truth is that everyone has special needs. My needs are special because I am special, I am an individual that is different than anyone who has ever lived or who will ever live. If we started teaching ALL children like they were special, or like individuals, than we wouldn't pull out a group of children and spend all our resources trying to make them conform to one system that just happens to keep the majority content.
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