The Real Job of Educators: Helping Kids Learn to Read

Our schools are being slowly choked to death by the insidious creep of administrative bloat. Layers upon layers of managers, consultants, and assorted bureaucratic barnacles have attached themselves to the education system, siphoning away precious resources that should be going to the classroom.

This army of educrats, as one might call them, fills their days with meetings, workshops, training sessions, and anything else they can imagine that justifies their existence. Actual teaching and learning seem like distant afterthoughts, so consumed are they with the latest fads and jargon about "learning outcomes," "stakeholder engagement," and other empty corporate-speak.

Meanwhile, teachers struggle with overcrowded classrooms, insufficient supplies, and mountains of paperwork. But the educrats are too busy admiring their own slick presentations and clever euphemisms to notice. Or perhaps they simply don't care, since they continue drawing their inflated salaries regardless of whether Johnny can read.

This is what happens when a system loses its why, its purpose. As the great Simon Sinek says, when there is no trust, no higher cause animating people's actions, you get all kinds of dysfunctional behavior - lying, faking, hiding. That is on full display in our education bureaucracy today.

What should be sacred - teaching children - has become secondary to keeping up appearances and preserving petty fiefdoms. True leadership and deep reform are needed to clear out the smothering layers of decrepit bureaucracy from our schools. We must remember that the purpose of education is not to serve bloated administrations and their delusions of usefulness - it is to nurture children's minds and prepare them for life. Until we get back to that guiding north star, our schools will remain lost in a bureaucratic wilderness.

The educators and administrators who benefit from and perpetuate bureaucratic bloat are masters at rationalizing the status quo. When challenged on wasteful spending or ineffective programs, they are quick to toss out excuses: 

"We don't have the resources." 

"It's too complicated to change."  

"We're too busy as it is."

"We have to follow district/state/federal policies."

There is always some justification for why things can't be improved or done differently. Meaningful self-examination is avoided at all costs - it might reveal that huge swaths of these administrative empires are redundant or useless. 

You'll almost never hear them take a step back and do a thoughtful cost-benefit analysis: Which programs are truly helping kids versus just keeping bureaucrats employed? What's the return on investment for our latest consultant or training scheme? They don't want to ask those questions because they know the answer will demand real change.  

It's easier for them to hide behind excuses and divert blame. They are afraid to challenge the status quo because it props up their power and salaries. Kids' education takes a backseat to the self-interest of bloated bureaucracies and their refusal to reform. Until this culture changes, the excuses and rationalizations will continue while schools languish.