As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, my wife is a School District Administrator, for the last 6 years. She is constantly saying she has control over 5 percent of her job, the rest is making sure they meet Fed and State mandates. More locally, the School Board really makes the decisions, but the DA is responsible for the daily administration of those decisions. Of course, when it goes south it’s the DA’s fault!
Having said that, plenty easy to find fault all around. Having been involved in 5 different schools I can say with little hesitation that the vast majority ( ok, maybe most) teachers and adminstrators have your children’s best interests at heart. These have been smaller, country setting schools, I’m sure LA, Chicago, Milwaukee, etc are less so, maybe by a lot.
Our last church, about half the kids were home schooled. Some turned out great, some the parents had no business trying to teach anyone anything. We have a couple of K-8 church schools in our community who then go to public schools 9-12. Some kids are rock stars, some not so much. The current trend seems to be tailoring the educational needs of each student to an individual plan, but of course that adds up to a lot of extra money, which nobody wants to put to that cause. Everybody seems to be fighting for an ever shrinking piece of the pie!
Obviously, I’m biased, but I can tell you the solution is not as easy as replacing all the people that don’t think like us, with people that do think like us. In the first place, they don’t exist. If you want to make a change, run for your local school board and get a couple of your like minded friends to run as well. I’ve seen it happen, however in that situation it went from what we as a group would like to see to what you are lamenting. My wife retired for one year, then found a different job as DA at a different school. Those who took over, saw it as an improvement.......