On this issue I’m in solid agreement with you, RoseAnn. Decades of poor policy and oversight have led to a state where systematic reform is difficult.

It outrages me to see teachers retained in no-work positions on full salary & benefits after accusations of misconduct accompanied by evidence. I spent my first four years in a private school, and when I started grade 5 in a public elementary school because my parents couldn’t afford the tuition anymore, the impression I got at age 10 was that “this place is so lazy”.

I could find the link if I searched a bit, but there was a great article in a paper like the NY Times where a large school building in upper Manhattan was divided into standard and charter schools. Same facility, same books and equipment, same neighborhood and student mix. Unsurprisingly, the students in the charter school started doing better, absenteeism dropped, and grades rose.

What primarily differed was the latitude the charter school principal had in setting work rules and school policy. Teachers were evaluated and accountable, work rules allowed for after-school tutoring and support, and more (I say “primarily” because the parents became more engaged themselves when their kids went to the charter school. Parents getting more engaged will improve outcomes in any school.)

As a parent I now dedicate significant time engaging with my kids’ teachers, as well as with the principals of the schools each attends. I’m fortunate to live in an area with great schools now, but I’ve experienced other suburban school districts first-hand that shared some of the dysfunction I experienced in NYC.

What were the common traits of success and failure? First and foremost, strong principals who managed their schools the way good business managers run any operations – as leaders who set high standards in the interest of their customers. I’ve seen good leaders in business achieve great things with their teams despite corporate bureaucracies – they find a way to deliver by treating that as any other obstacle to overcome.

Second, great leaders need staff committed to working together as a team rather than dividing into camps of “workers” and “management”. I don’t envy anyone assigned to work in a place with an entrenched culture of dysfunction, but we all have the ability to control how we do our jobs. People get more job satisfaction out of working in functional versus dysfunctional settings, so given the knowledge and support that change is possible, most people will respond positively.

Third, all parties need the resources to succeed. That doesn’t mean bloated budgets and bureaucracies, but it does mean that the process for getting essential supplies into the hands of the teachers should be as streamlined as it would be in a business setting. Engaged parents also make a great difference here – our schools publish lists of supplies that would be helpful but are not in the budget, and the community responds well.

There’s no question that tenure needs to be abolished at the grade-school level. It’s appropriate in a university setting so people can pursue independent research that challenges the status quo, but there is no justification for teachers of grades 1-12. It’s worth the risk of labor actions to deal with this once and for all. My kids’ current teachers are all great, and none of them object to being held to performance standards.

Parents need to hold the school boards and their local governments accountable instead of just focusing on teachers. Voter turnout in school board elections is typically abysmal, and the people elected can do great harm or good until the next election. I’m appalled at the bloated salaries at the school district level, and in NJ in particular, 235 school administrators make more than the governor’s salary of $175,000/year. Do you have to pay a lot to attract top talent? Yes, but high salaries lead to high pensions, so these costs are locked into state budgets and borne by taxpayers long after the individuals leave.

Finally, it has to be stated in fairness that institutional bloat and entrenched bureaucracies can happen in any setting, and schools can be good or bad regardless of whether they’re public or private. “Use vouchers” or “Privatize education” are not going to fix that. My direct experience is that I grew up in a part of NYC where many neighborhood kids went to the local Catholic School, which was a large institution that had been running for close to 100 years by then. Turns out that the nuns running the school were as entrenched a bureaucracy as any school union, and if you questioned the poor teaching performance of Sister “X”, it was you as a parishoner who was reprimanded for challenging their authority in how to run the school. So my parents enrolled us in a small Episcopal school run much like agile charter schools are today, and we did well until the tuition became unaffordable.

The education my kids now get, technology aside, is better than I got in either of my elementary schools, so this is not about public-vs-private, or “can the government run a good school”. Any entity is capable of running a great school, but as the stakeholders we need to be engaged, demand accountability, and legislate away policies like grade-school tenure that serve no one but the underperforming.