Over at decaturish.com suggestions have been put forth that might address the long running, systemic, perhaps even structural dysfunction of the DeKalb County School Board. Specifically this includes: term limits; pay rises; and super districts. The second of these suggestions sounds alarmingly familiar to anyone watching the circus that is public education. No matter the problem the solution is always [more] money. Always. Despite the fact this invariably ignores TOD's law: where there is no solution there is no problem, only a situation. Since [more] money has yet to show even partial success in addressing education's issues, it is difficult to say there is a problem. Unless we avoid the attempts to take money for a solution.
The similarity is also strikingly similar to the incessant calls for teacher pay rises. Every year. Every budget. The feigned logic is that better pay will attract better teachers, ignoring the elephant in the room: it is all but impossible to fire underperforming teacher to make way for these better, and better paid, candidates.
So maybe decaturish is onto something. Though incumbency is a powerful force, it is possible to remove elected officials by the ballot box or, as we have seen, with action by the state. If these pay rises are combined with the first suggestion, to impose term limits, we might well see improvements at a less than glacial pace. Otherwise we can expect to witness ongoing degradation of the system.
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