Someone needs to go beyond our local "spending per pupil" and ask where that money is going. Knox county's spending seems to put a heavy emphasis on spending for administrative tasks over spending for teachers. How do teachers' salaries compare to those of the AJ crowd? How do we justify this gap? How many of the programs that the downtown folks put into place can show genuine progress in the education of our children as opposed to BS standardized test scores or other non-real-outcome-based measures?

Our school system seems to be far more concerned with the well being of its administrative personnel than it is with our children. Our teachers are underpaid, but administrators are not. Someone needs to look at how the schools are run as a business and question what they see.

Bbeanster-

has been made and debunked more times than I can remember.

There've been a mess of studies and investigation, and it's never shown that the school system overspends on administrative costs.

Care to remember for the record? I mean, if there's been so many, surely you can direct us, or perhaps quote directly from a couple of the "mess of studies."

It's clear from Lindsey's own salary that administrators in Knox Co. are overpaid. Although I'm sure by stacking the school board with former administrators...Williams, Stooksbury, and in the future, perhaps Gratz, that the bloated and ever political central office has nothing to fear.

I know that some community groups in other states have made it an issue concerning the number of administrators whose pay exceeds $70k or $75K.

I guess that we have long left the era where people actually took pay cuts to enter into "public service."

Now we only hear " If we don't pay our people competitive salaries, private industry will take them away." Personally, I don't think there are any businesses in Knox Co. who would hire our school officials for what they're being paid now, unless the businesses were looking for scholl or government contracts, and they thought the former school officials could give them a leg up.

Of course, Knox Co. will say that the school officials are paid for their success in getting students to pass...state tests, but the real tests are those like the NAEP and college courses. There's no accountability in Knox Co. schools, and the Kallenberg case is a perfect example.

Knox Co. school officials should be dreading what Greg Isaacs has in store for them.

Bbeanster-
I knew you couldn't back it up, I just thought you might be more creative than using made up rules and personal attacks.

Guess not.

Ratios don't mean anything taken by themselves. How are these administrators distributed and what are they doing? Are they practicing good management and business practices or are they doing business 'the way we've always done it?' Someone who was a great teacher is sometimes not a very good business person or manager. It is always good to scrutinize a process and ask whether or not it is solving the problem it was designed to solve. And whether or not this is even still a problem in the first place. And whether there might be a better way to do it. I don't see this happening.

To assess efficiency and good management forces a look beyond pupil/administrator ratios.

As a Ruby level National Forensic Leaguer I feel qualified to jump in on Gary and BBeanster's debate and referee.

The rule is:

He who asserts, must prove.

A generation ago, West HS and Farragut HS had the only active forensic programs. What schools have speech and debate now?

...now the "poorly-paid halfwit working at the clerk's office" or "starving teacher" is some sort of sorely missed bygone era?

Wingnuttery is price inelastic.

Pay people any wage to work in government. They'll bitch at every price point.

____________________________

I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!

(link...)

The above site shows average admin/teacher pay for 2006-07 for the US. There is also a table indicating the variance for schools in the Southeast. Anyone know where I can find a simlar table for Knox County schools?

In 2006 Knox County Schools spent $7,259 per student. Where did the money come from?

$4,232 (58.3%) was local funds, ranked 11th in the state
$2,330 (32.1%) was state funds, ranked 134th in the state
$697 (9.6%) was federal funds, ranked 112th in the state

There are 135 school systems in TN.

How was the money spent?

84% was salaries and benefits. You can see a pie chart with more details here:
(link...)

You can see how our teacher salaries compare to surrounding districts here:

(link...)

All this information is from the Knox County Schools budget office and is for the school year 05-06. I don't have summary information for this school year yet, and of course with BEP 2.0, our state funding should go up for the 07-08 school year.

I don't know how our administrative salaries compare to other systems, but I do remember reading a report that said we had a lot fewer administrators than similarly-sized systems. That might have been the MJLM audit report done 5-6 years ago.

I would like to base teacher and administrator salaries on performance and not just number of years worked and degrees earned. Devising a fair way to assess performance, that's not just about test score results, is challenging, but not impossible. We should also consider offering differential pay based on supply and demand of hard to staff positions, e.g. Chemistry.

The Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) allows excellent teachers to advance their careers by becoming master and mentor teachers, without abandoning the classroom. Strong teachers continue to teach, while sharing their skills and strategies with other teachers. As someone mentioned in an earlier post, excellent teaching skills don't always translate into excellent administrative skills.

The TAP program is being piloted at Northwest Middle School, Holston Middle School and Pond Gap Elementary School. I've heard very positive feedback about TAP. I will be interested to see if student performance improved significantly in the TAP schools.

Indya Kincannon

As a Ruby level National Forensic Leaguer I feel qualified to jump in on Gary and BBeanster's debate and referee.

He who asserts, must prove.

Here's my rule: He/She who receives a salary funded by the taxpayer, should be publicly accountable.

It seems that if a person or group demands that one part of county government be accountable for its administrative costs, than all parts of Knox Co. government, including the school system,should be accountable as well.

School Board's Cindy Buttry and I are veterans of the NFL. That is, National Forensic League. We're talking speech and debate, not cadavers. It is a club activity. Thomas Deakins and I talked briefly after the meeting about the advantages of it having a stronger presence in our schools.

How far west does the circuit extend?

When I was an NFL'er in Kansas Flint Hills (4-yr double letter, double ruby, c. 1987), my squad would travel 3 hours or more to get to tournis.

(Let me know if you need a qualified judge in mid-TN. It's been a coon's age since I've had a flowsheet in front of me, but my events were LD, 4-speaker CX, OO, HI, Prose, IDA, DA... pretty much anything.)

____________________________

I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!

I hope that the TAP program is successful, or that at least SOME program is able to reward true excellence in teaching. I know several excellent long-time teachers who have left teaching because of having to 'teach the test.' I know that there are forces outside the local school system that are driving that mentality, but it really needs to stop.

More of our local school programs need to budgeted in accordance with some sort of real outcome-based formula instead of the failed No Child Left Behind approach, at least to the degree it can be done within federal constraints. In tight budget times especially, it is important to make sure that every dollar the school system receives can be directly traced to an honest, meaningful positive impact on the kids. No program or department should be above scrutiny.

Show me any other organization of similar size that spends a smaller proportion of its personnel budget on management than a public school district. Show me one, just one.

While you're at it, try to find any other organization that delivers 75 to 80 percent of its entire budget to the front line employees who accomplish its critical tasks.

I work for a large multinational corporation, and it is constantly adding vice presidents. You just don't see that in a public school district.

Liberty and justice for all.

It's how effective the organization is. If you can show real positive outcomes for any given investment, be it administrative or front line, then great. Every level should still be scrutinized frequently, not for the purpose of harassing people, but for the purpose of trying to improve things.

Management, whether lean or bloated, has the potential to either guide the organization to excellence, drive it into shambles, or let it cruise the status quo to mediocrity. Same goes for the front line.

Proportions don't mean nearly as much as how effective the organization is at accomplishing its goals. The Knox County School System does a lot of things very well, but it (like many organizations) frequently takes the easy way out when it comes to budget justification, citing proportions, ratios and other statistical BS rather than stating "here is the problem, here is how we want to fix it, and here are the results of our fix." Sometimes the results warrant continued or expanded funding of a program, sometimes they warrant termination. But base it on real facts. Ratios and proportions, especially when talking about money, don't give any insight into how effective programs are and therefore how much bang for the buck the school kids are receiving.

I stand by my original claim. Hopefully with Lindsey gone, things will improve. But I know of some pretty whopping raises for some of the AJ crowd that sort of snuck in under the radar. I know of some justifications for some pretty whopping budget items that were based on statistics from other locales, not Knox County. I know of other justifications based only on national averages.

There is a difference between statistical analysis and BS statistical analysis. We all know that stats can be skewed to prove what ever point one wants to make. Sure, statistical analysis is going to be a part of any measurement. However, I think that at least the past administration spent an awful lot of its energy defending the status quo trying to make some kind of political gain.

As for low taxes--I am a liberal. But, I'm not a push-over. I am perfectly willing to fund the schools or other parts of the government at adequate levels to get the job done. But, I expect those organizations to constantly examine what they are doing to make sure they're not wasting money before giving them any more. I expect them to come to the table with more justification for spending than "because this is what it takes to get our spending per pupil ratio up to the level of this average amount." I am a liberal, but I don't trust the government, and if no one asks questions, the status quo or worse will continue forever. I am a liberal, just not a loveable one.