Bureaucratic bunkum

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Bureaucratic bunkum				September 28, 2011

Let me get this straight.

Despite the fact that the WJC school system is once again dragging trailers onto middle school campuses, or that they’re paying beginning teachers a below-poverty-line annual salary, or that parents are upset because there aren’t enough textbooks to go around, the School Board has graciously decided to fork over $69,000 to a Boston-based consulting firm to develop a “strategic plan.”

I suppose I could go along with such a maneuver if I thought it would address any of the issues I just mentioned. But it won’t. As Donald Rumsfeld presciently remarked, there are known knowns and known unknowns, and bureaucrats would always rather deal with the latter.

One need only read the guidelines sent by the School Board’s select committee to the competing consulting firms to conclude that this is going to be a junk-brained bacchanal of bureaucratic bunkum that only administrators out to make a name for themselves consider boffo pedagogical procedure.

Take the first guideline.

“A strengths-based approach to needs assessment, data gathering and goal construction.”

I have no idea what a strengths-based approach to anything is, but it seems to me that the system doesn’t need a consulting firm to determine its needs, to gather data or to construct goals. If it does, all those high-priced, highly educated administrators running the store should either resign or hand over the $69K to a committee of dedicated teachers who more than anyone know what the system needs at this point. They gather data and set goals every day.

And then there’s this gem.

“A process and plan to engage employees, students, families, as well as community-at-large to identify opportunities and provide input into goals that will move the division toward the vision of being the premier school division in Virginia.”

The idea of asking the world at large to “identify opportunities and provide input into goals” – whatever that means – seems rather ludicrous, especially when you consider the fact that teachers, students and families are already well aware of and have voiced their concerns numerous times about the very basic needs that have failed to be met.

No system that pays its teachers a pittance, expects them to work night and day, sends kids to class in trailers, fails to provide the materials students need or overloads elementary school classes is anywhere close to being the premier school division in Virginia. Until these very basic problems are solved, there’s little need for gathering input for goals.

Next comes, “A process and plan to collect and distill information gleaned from internal and external constituencies.”

This seems to be the tag-end of the previous guideline, though I tremble to contemplate the results when consultants and bureaucrats begin to “distill information.”

And, finally, there’s this.

“A process and plan to create final strategic goal statements, objectives and metrics.”

Do we really need a process and a plan to create statements or outline objectives? Perhaps you do, if you’re going to so distill information that goals must be contrived to jibe with the distillation. Otherwise, I would think that any administrator worth his salt could write up a goal statement without a process and a plan.

Bureaucratic processes and plans aside, here are what I consider to be the basic goals of any school system:

Develop a core of dedicated teachers by giving them a livable wage and letting them teach. Free of administrative impositions and nonessential chores, their primary duties should revolve around their students in class. Period. They are not guidance counselors, school psychologists, truancy officers, hall monitors or assistant principals.

Give students the best possible education you can, but make them earn their diplomas. Conjuring up devious ways to pass failing students for the sake of graduation rates only adds grist to the notion that failure is not a fact of life.

Let administrators, not foreign consultants, develop plans for their own system. And remember: Developing long-term goals is fine, as long as you have the existing problematical known knowns under control.