Good teachers struggle against their union and the entrenched education administration bureaucracy. I tip my hat to them. The very best teachers have nothing to do with public education and opt for the freedom of private school environs.
forbes.com
Book Review
Classroom Crooks
Victoria Murphy, 06.04.04, 12:41 PM ET
Egregious mismanagement in America's schools is sadly familiar. Education experts, not to mention journalists, have devoted countless pages to explaining what's wrong and how to right it. Yet the problems persist.
Faced with this depressing situation, discouraged reformers may be tempted to overlook Lydia G. Segal's Battling Corruption in America's Public Schools (Northeastern University Press, $32.50). If these problems are impervious to reform, why read another book on how to fix them? But Battling Corruption earns itself a place on the reformers' bookshelves. The examples Segal provides of fraud, bribery, patronage and theft are salutary reminders of just how bad things are out there--for the kids, their parents and the educators trying to do good.
Segal focuses on the hulking school systems in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. These systems command operating budgets that total $24 billion. Battling Corruption leaves the impression that less than half of that huge sum goes towards the goal of better education. A lot of it just gets squandered.
The corruption is sometimes obvious, like when a New York school official lands a Rolex watch, a BMW and $100,000 for ensuring that a $6 million contract goes to certain vendors. Segal writes that New York's Bureau of Supplies, a $2 billion entity, was dubbed by employees the "Bureau of Surprise" because goods sent out were often severely lacking in either quality or quantity. The main warehouse, called "The Sieve," was a free store for the lucky few who worked inside.
Less-blatant corruption is no less damaging. Segal describes how the most expensive school construction project in California, Belmont Learning Center, came to a halt after a discovery that the half-built school in Los Angeles was sitting on top of an oil field emanating toxic, explosive gases. Facilities officials had totally neglected to follow accounting procedures and failed to warn Board of Education members of the environmental hazards (it is unclear if this omission was intentional). The error cost taxpayers $200 million. No one was held accountable.
Segal does a solid job of laying out the cost beyond dollars. The longer kids stay in U.S. schools, the worse they do. American fourth graders in 1996 ranked seventh among thirty-eight countries in math and science. By the eighth grade those students came in 21st. The U.S. kids were outranked by their peers in the Slovak Republic. The biggest problems are in inner-city schools where many children fall behind in reading, writing and mathematics. Not surprisingly, schools with more incidents of corruption have lower student test scores. That holds true even after accounting for race, teacher experience, student proficiency in English, and parental education and income.
Segal's background is an ideal fit for her subject matter. In the early 1990s, after getting a law degree at Harvard, Segal was worked for the Manhattan district attorney. She led dozens of investigations in the aftermath of accusations that school jobs New York City were being sold for sex and cash. "To hear phrases such as sting operation and informant in the context of public education and children was terribly disturbing," she writes.
Segal thinks the cause of rampant corruption is not bad people but a lousy system that over centralizes decision-making. She describes "the worst of two worlds: Crooks who want to bilk the system can do so because the top has little handle on what is going on below, but employees who want to improve learning must sometimes break the rules."
Throughout Battling Corruption, Segal uses management theories to explain why the system is flawed by design and how it could be improved. She advocates independent auditors, highly publicized crackdowns, privatization of jobs, easing of labor rules, more accountability and ultimately, giving the power to make everyday decisions to the people running the individual schools. All well-intentioned stuff, but the previous chapters are studded with such vivid anecdotes about the failure of past reforms that it's hard to believe that Segal's proposals would fare any better.
For example, after New York State opted for local political control of schools in 1969 (a reaction to the problems of a centralized system), corruption did not disappear, it merely assumed different forms. Citing several scandals, Segal argues convincingly that these were predictable occurrences. In the late 1980s a Bronx grand jury looking into area school districts determined that "fraud and political patronage were 'a way of life.' "
Segal offers her readers little reason to conclude that much has improved since then. The wrongdoing she details--its extent, and importantly, its history--leaves a sense that merely tinkering with the current system cannot eradicate its ills. A radical overhaul that introduces real competition--vouchers and charter schools--might be the only hope for motivating educators across the board to do the right thing for America's kids.
This is beginning to happen. Business leaders who are also social entrepreneurs--such as Gap (nyse: GPS) founder Donald Fisher, Dell's (nasdaq: DELL) Michael Dell, Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT) Bill Gates and former Qualcomm (nasdaq: QCOM) executive Gary Jacobs--are backing new, smaller schools run by energetic educators. More should join them.
Victoria Murphy is a Forbes staff writer. |
