December 17, 1999

Now that the new Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District school board members are installed, I have some facts and questions about education I hope they will consider. Americans are getting serious about alternatives to mandatory "government" schools. Two-thirds of those polled would like to try vouchers, so it's definitely time for the education establishment to respond.

Here is a list of pertinent national data about the public school system. The Department of Education's budget ballooned to $38 billion last year, even though there is a directly inverse relationship between SAT scores and DoE spending.

Just since 1977, instructional staffs have increased 10%, with teachers' ranks lowering student-to-teacher ratios steadily since the early 1960's (the halcyon days of American student achievement), even before class-size reduction laws. Special education student numbers are up 47%, with 13% of students now being pulled out of regular classrooms. And this leap occurred as public school enrollment declined 2% and mentally retarded pupils decreased by almost half, while newly discovered "learning disabled" student ranks have proliferated.

Testing data shows no lasting improvements from compensatory education programs and recent research concludes that a large number of the LD are simply kids who were never taught to read. With special education disproportionately draining school budgets, this is a major cost concern.

But the single most contributing factor to lower public schools' quality has been the teachers unions. Since the NEA endorsed teachers' right to strike in 1969, school boards have lost governing power to negotiators and administrators, administrators have lost employee relations power to unions, and therefore taxpaying citizens have lost their proper representation of elected board members, even as teachers unions' staffs run through billions of dollars per year.

Despite all these major revenue-burning components, Fairfielders are once again hearing the growing drumbeats of another school bond campaign. To eliminate this questionable need, the local board does have the power to cut educational bureaucracy at all levels by not jumping onto revenue-sharing bandwagons for untested or proven-to-be ineffective programs, such as class-size reduction, DARE, etc.

There are myriad possibilities for slashing our local educational costs. New board members: Please stop okaying expensive teaching fads.

© 1999 Cynthia Hahn