The local school district, Littleton Public Schools, sent me a nicely designed pamphlet threatening to cut 9% of its teaching staff if voters don’t approve a tax increase sure to be on an upcoming ballot.
This is a common tactic by school districts and teachers unions. They offer only two choices, fire teachers and increase class sizes (with the threat of lower tests scores as a result) or increase taxes. School administrators must be the most highly trained and productive workers in the world. Their jobs are never mentioned as possible costs savings. It’s amazing since the teachers are the ones in contact with students, yet adminstrators seem to have the most job security in education.
What it really comes down to is that voters wouldn’t bat an eye if administrators jobs are threatened. If teachers might get laid off, well that’s another story. It’s all about money. The voters are much more willing to raise taxes if that is the only alternative to losing teachers.
Here is something strange. The Littleton Public schools is consistently in the top three districts in the Denver Metro area in test scores while have the lowest funding per student in the metro area. It just demonstrates that throwing more money into schools does not relate to quality education. I’ll be voting against the coming tax proposal.
Back to test scores, here is a study that found there is no relation between small class sizes and high test scores. What happens is that more teachers need to be hired (not a bad thing for the teachers union) so students are getting more individual attention but its from poorer quality teachers.