My comment to ECC, Mar 03, 2020  in response to Wm Brown’s post on

A 33-year public school teacher, Curtis Hier, says the ed system is “insane” as funding, instead of producing intended educational results, “goes to an ever-expanding bureaucracy.”

Time to have a full-scale inquiry into wastage in our public school systems! Especially at this time of a fearful medical epidemic threatening to close schools, we are learning that even with closing schools, education can still continue effectively. A front-page story on Wall Street Journal, Feb 27, ’20 is headlined: “Classrooms Closed, an Entire City Home Schools.” (About Hong Kong.)
A story in New York Times, Feb 28 (NY edition) had this headline: “Fear of Vast ‘Mass Home-Schooling’ Experiment” and the online story was headlined: “What Would a Coronavirus Outbreak in the U.S. Mean for Schools?”

I proposed such a study of wastage on a popular educator blog a few weeks ago. A provocative post dealt with the topic of government school systems squandering the education dollar, with “The Blob” always saying that whatever funding there was, was “not enough”. Of course, we know “Blob” stands for “bloated education bureaucracy”!

The blog item I mention is here: How Much Money Does a School System Need? https://jaypgreene.com/2020/02/11/how-much-money-does-a-school-system-need/, and if you really become interested, the author, Greg Forster, links his much more developed analysis in a Think Tank article entitled: “How much money does a government monopoly need? https://www.ocpathink.org/post/how-much-money-does-a-government-school-monopoly-need

Briefly, here are excerpts from my comment:

Undoubtedly, many people are annoyed that such a high-expense item in a state’s budget — public education — produces such dismal and uneven results. Few do anything about this irksome puzzle. Some do recycle this mysterious enigma repeatedly in books and articles.

UNESCO in 1971-2 produced two books, “Wastage in education a world problem” and “A statistical study of wastage at school”. Questionnaires were sent out to member countries, a conference was held, issues were identified: dropping out, illiteracy, inadequate training of teachers, examinations, the basics, etc. Recommendations were made. A literature list is included. However, further work on this seems to have been dropped by UNESCO.

I think it’s timely, especially as alternatives and choices are being actively deliberated, that this matter be seriously addressed.

The average person ruminating and despairing about these contradictions in our education system is utterly stymied by it all. However, hopefully, people with voice and connections can galvanize some intelligence here.

Any suggestions, who, what, might start the ball rolling on an inquiry into public school wastage of the education dollar? It’s not just a local problem — it’s international.