American Education

The Cupboard is getting bare

American Education

What Happened to Ms. Jones?

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

     I heard a retired education administrator talk the other day.  He seemed to have all the answers, but what he said is still a mystery.  Optics, and metrics, and baselines, and enough mumble jumble that he certainly seemed to convince himself and others . . . until the discussion switched to retirement.

     Who’s Rich?

     The conversation got to the point of economics of teaching, and, as if on cue, the song and dance about how teaching was a tradeoff with the private sector having the advantage in earnings.  The co-host of the radio talk show asked the educator a question about retirement earnings.  How much did he earn was the question, but he never actually answered.  

     He gave a hypothetical response of how much a teacher could earn based upon time and earnings at the time of his retirement.  The result in his example came out somewhere near $65,000 annually.  Not rich you say?

     The private sector alternative

     If a private sector citizen is planning for a retirement after 30 years and intends to make $65,000 annually without a hiccup he needs to have packed away a sizeable stock portfolio or a yet bigger savings account.  In the private world, a 30 year career would put the citizen at age 55 or thereabouts.  Think hard.  How many of your friends in the private world have retired at age 55?

     If a savings account is the vehicle to retirement, the private citizen would have to have built a net worth of nearly $2 million in his 30 year career.  If it was a stock portfolio his investments would not have to be quite that amount, but certainly he would have had to average sinking over $20,000 per year into good investments or a well managed fund in order to achieve enough security to retire at 55.  It takes an awfully good job to consistently sweep that much money off annually.  It also takes a very well managed fund to secure the end game of a planned pre-social security retirement goal.  That is why folks in the private world don’t retire at 55.

     The money pit

     The United States is borrowing $4 billion per day.  The estimate of total unfunded liabilities at the federal level may be as high as $114 trillion at this time.  At the rate of current economic activity, that represents 10 GDP years to support those liabilities.  Our hypothetical early retiree from the private sector would be hard pressed to think he could ever retire if his liabilities equaled 14 years of his income. 

     The retired administrator concluded his segment on the airwaves by reminding young folks that a career in education still presented a rewarding opportunity.  He did the expected by restating yearly earnings wouldn’t match those of the private sector, but I suspect a whole lot of folks are beginning to see that verbal charade for what it is.  When the reality is that a permanent fund of upwards of $1.8 million must be in place to support each retirement, the idea of rich takes on a whole different meaning.

     Try equating that to the general population in the private sector.  In the real world, retirements after 30 year careers have been mere figments of the imagination.  They don’t happen because economic realities simply don’t add up out where the cupboards are robbed to keep this big machine afloat.

     Comparisons are automatic

     The data shows that the American educational system is the most capital intensive system in the world.  What we also hear incessantly when quality education is discussed is the need to for more funding.  Americans have been far too patient in dealing with that response.  Two things come to my mind when I hear it.  One is Ms. Jones and the other is another notch on the charade stick.

      Where oh’ where have the Ms. Jones’ of the world gone?  My Ms. Jones was a grade school principal.  She was the most terrifying human being in the history of the world.  She and the school secretary ran the school.  They ran it all without discussion. 

      There were no such things as equal rights and societal sensitivity.  There were no such things as maternal leave, disability allowances, or in service days, either.  What you could expect was fresh milk from T&M dairy, the pledge of allegiance, the occasional local radio snow day announcement that girls were allowed to wear pants to school, and Hunter’s’ Holiday.  Priorities were north and south!

     If you didn’t behave in class, there was that march down the hall to visit with Ms. Jones.  Worse yet was if she came to the room and hauled you out in front of the class.  If you have ever twitched a horse, you know the attention you paid to Ms. Jones’ every move as she directed you effortlessly with your ear twisted and all circulation cut off. 

    Everybody was scared to death of her.  Tough boys broke down into tears having to face her and answer her questions.  Maybe it was the look she gave you or maybe it was the split bat with holes drilled in it that hung on her wall.

     If you weren’t performing in class it meant a call from the school and a discussion with Ms. Jones and your summoned parents.  There we sat there across the desk from her taking a thrashing without saying much.

     That experience was only a bubble off the horror scale of what you faced from your parents afterwards.  There are those that now believe that it wasn’t so much your wellbeing that they were concerned with it was the prospect of going back in there to face that principal again.  They were afraid of her, too!

    She was an equalizer, she balanced all things, she didn’t let parents interfere with quality education, and  . . . she was the best friend we ever had.

     The loss of substance

     If the truth was known, Ms. Jones, the school superintendent, Mr. Gaines, and the school board could have run the county as well if there had been a few more hours in the day.  Nobody in my memory ever lined up to go battle the school board over some movement or cause.  If you walked in there to read the right act to Chester Williams, Mansel Mortensen and those other school board members you might find yourself back outside.  If you were lucky it would have been through the open door and not a closed window!

     That kind of local control is gone.  For too long, the educational process has run its surroundings rather than its surroundings running it.  The NEA and the Department of Education have transformed a system that was once predicated on the individual student to a process that is fragmented by social rule of the commons.  Sure the explanations are made and all the buzzwords are used with alacrity, but decisions are orchestrated through career path professionals and bureaucrats rather than no nonsense, old style educators.

     There may be worse examples of the transformation of a system that was managed efficiently by the likes of Ms. Jones and Mr. Gaines to a system run by the NEA and the modern educational bureaucracy, but they are few and far between. 

     If the recent debacle in Wisconsin is a precursor of things to come, it appears that from every angle the educational system is bloated, it is corrupt, it is poorly managed, and, notwithstanding the rhetoric, the education of the individual student is not the highest priority.  When the constant cry is an incessant call for more funding, it is time to fix the system . . . it is broken.

     Back to basics

     A place to start is to send all highly educated administrators to a remedial seminar in nursery rhymes.  Three of the rhymes would each require a short treatise which would be graded.  The first would be ‘Chicken Little’, the second would be the ‘Goose that laid the Golden Egg’, and the third would be ‘Fox in the Henhouse’. 

     Next, there would be the announcement that, henceforth, all retirement funds would come from savings from annual budgets, personal retirement accounts, and future earnings of students.  At the end of 30 years, all educators would have the option to consider retirement.  There would no longer be any multipliers or automatic assurances.  It would be based solely on this combination of factors.

    Perhaps, the preparedness of individual students  . . . would become the priority.            

    

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.  “I looked up to two respected men of the land in my past . . . Roy and Smokey.  In separate discussions I asked them when they took their last vacation and each of them pondered and remarked, “Well, I don’t think I ever took one.”  They lived in the real world . . . and neither retired.”