Blogger Betsy Newmark teaches government in a charter high school. Having taught in regular public schools, she’s in a good position to observe the politics of school governance.

…Ideas for reform in education seem to move on about a 10-15 year cycle. I can remember that, in the 1990s, the big push was to “site-based management” to give principals more power to make decisions about what is best for their individual school. So now the push is to take that power back because school administrators at the district level think they can make decisions better than the principals who are seeing how those decisions play out every single day.

I’m all for removing power as much as possible to the level where the decisions have the impact, whether it’s federalism in government or principals making more decisions for their individual schools. I taught for over a decade in a regular public school and never once did central office do anything that made my job better or easier. Some of the people who worked there were dedicated and knowledgeable, but overall, I was extremely unimpressed with the people in charge of the divisions I had contact with from the administrator in charge of “Language Arts” who canceled the district spelling bee because spelling was an old-fashioned, unnecessary skill to the administrator for “Social Sciences” who showed no interest when a professor of economics (my husband) offered to give free workshops to teach the basics of economics to teachers to the Foreign Languages administration who cancelled a program I’d built up teaching Russian in one middle school because they couldn’t match the program in other schools.

Right now I work at a charter school where final decisions about everything from funding to hiring to curriculum are made right here at the school by the principal and other teachers. If a teacher has an idea of some program or new class to offer, all we need to do is shoot off an email to the principal and we get a response and decision back immediately. When I wanted to offer a class on the Revolution and Civil War, I got approval instantaneously. When I wanted to offer new classes in the regular public schools, it took me months and about 80 pages of paperwork to get it approved. My principal’s philosophy is to hire teachers he respects and then let them do what they need and want to do to teach students. If a teacher is not working out, he and other teachers will work with that teacher, but if the situation doesn’t improve that teacher will be let go. That never happens in the regular public schools. I saw teachers who didn’t know their subjects and couldn’t control students stay around for years because they’d gotten tenure. Just imagine what principals with real control can do if they didn’t have administrators back at central office and the teachers’ union determining that incompetent teachers should be kept hanging around.

The other amusing item from this report on Wake County Schools is the conclusion that it’s just not fair that some school PTA’s raise more money than other schools and the central office has no control over that money. Oh, no! Parents wanting to supplement their children’s education beyond what they pay in taxes and, because some schools are in more affluent areas, they raise more money.

The audit noted that resources at schools vary by how much money parent-teacher associations and booster clubs raise. According to the audit, fundraising varies from less than $7,000 to more than $200,000. Schools that are able to raise a lot of money provide additional computers, field trips, library books and programs for the gifted.

Yes, life is unfair and wealthier parents are willing to shell out big bucks if they think the money will go to their individual child’s education. What is the solution?

The report recommends providing money to equalize the contributions as much as possible.

If there were already money available to provide all those goodies to poor schools, wouldn’t we know about it? Instead, we get regular demands for more and more money because of the tremendous growth that Wake County is experiencing. And are parents going to continue donating big bucks if the money isn’t going to their children’s schoolroom?