Physicists have known something interesting for quite some time: applying a force on an object moves that object, and applying more force on that object moves that object even more.
Through an often painful political maturation, I came to a similar conclusion in matters of public policy. If you have a policy that produces poor outcomes, adopting more of that policy produces even worse outcomes.
So it is with the recent proposal to make the school system’s Board of Education a full-time job. This year the board and the teachers’ union proved they are failures in a) protecting employees from predators, b) giving students equal access to high-quality teachers, c) preventing nepotism, and d) add your own grievance here. How can anyone really believe that making those positions full time will remediate these problems? If anything, full-time positions will make those problems worse! Furthermore, from a managerial perspective, would an employer with a failing part-time employee promote him/her to full time?
If you don’t accept my follow-the-science approach to public education, let’s look a Niche’s ranking of the top five school districts: Adlai Steven High School District (IL), Glenbrook High School District (IL), Evanston Township High School District (IL), Eanes Independent School District (TX), and Township High School District 113 (IL). None of these high-performing school districts have full-time board members. Everyone is part time and tending to a small, focused operation. If anything, busting MCPS into several smaller districts would guarantee high performance and a smaller bureaucracy that cannot hide its shortcomings.
Lastly, before begging for sympathy for our overworked MCPS board members, let’s ask if they are being efficient with their precious time they do give us. Those people spent hours and hours in hearings over a coercive LGBT curriculum that many parents, teachers, and students wanted no part of. Now they are spending hours and hours in “investigations” into a cover-up that, had any of them been doing their job, would never have happened. I see no reason to reward these inefficient board members with a box of Girl Scout cookies, not to mention a full-time position or pay raise.
