In an LBO piece with lots of basic numbers about education, Doug Henwood writes:
"Current — as opposed to capital — [education] spending in the U.S. shows an unusually large share [compared with other countries] devoted to administrative and support staff, and a small share devoted to teachers’ salaries. ... (More on this in #133, but one reason for the high administrative costs in the U.S. is the fragmentation of school systems. Every little town has its own system — a huge duplication of effort.)" http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/InAndOutOfSchool.html It is more than fragmentation. Urban school districts become heavy with experts, specialists for certain kinds of students, program coordinators and other bureaucracy. Perhaps Doug's follow-up will shed light on the dynamics at work. A similar thing goes on in large city governments: fewer people doing work like infrastructure maintenance, more staff generating paper and holding meetings with each other. The change over the last two decades is quite noticeable. Charles Andrews _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
