Leadership’s Future: Ignorance is NOT Bliss
by Miki Saxon
Budget woes are disrupting state and local governments and everything they fund. Cuts are being made and what better place to cut than those things that don’t show up immediately? Things that are either out of site, like infrastructure, or that can be pushed off to when times are flush(er), such as learning.
As most CEOs will tell you how better to reduce costs than to reduce headcount? And that means firing teachers—more than 100,000 come June and that’s not all.
As a result, the 2010-11 school term is shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half century. In addition to teacher layoffs, districts are planning to close schools, cut programs, enlarge classes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money.
Politicians, especially local pols, tend to focus on supplying instant gratification to their constituency in order be reelected, so even as the economy improves you can’t count on the money being replaced and teachers rehired—assuming they are still available.
It’s far easier to use smoke and mirrors to show that kids are doing just fine in the brave new reduced budget world—smoke being standardized tests as viewed through the mirror of lowered standards.
Education offers little in the way of instant gratification to voters, rather it offers whining kids complaining about homework, tests and tough teachers who have the nerve to expect them to stop texting, pay attention and learn. (What nerve.)
Not all kids are whining, some in New Jersey are protesting the cuts approved by voters .
The mass walkouts were inspired by Michelle Ryan Lauto, an 18-year-old aspiring actress and a college freshman, and came a week after voters rejected 58 percent of school district budgets put to a vote across the state (not all districts have a direct budget vote).
The full damage of cuts now won’t be felt for years to come, but the voting public has both long and short-term memory loss and the pols who did it will be long gone—or moved to a higher level.
And America will be left wringing its hands and moaning about its loss of world leadership and the incredible difficulty of finding good talent to hire.
Image credit: 19melissa68 on flickr
