Opus 2015-161: Headlines: Follow the Money

The Drudge Report headline led me to an article dealing with increased violence in schools.  It is talking about policy being pushed across the country by our Progressive (aka Liberal, socialist, communist, Democrat, Rino) leaders.  The policy says that since minority students receive more disciplinary action it must be a result of racism, not the behavior of the students.  The People’s
Repubik of Kalifornia recently had Chairman Brown sign into law a new standard that made it much more difficult to remove disruptive and defiant students from the school environment.  I wrote about that at How Wrong Can I Be, parts 1 and 2.

The article at EAG shows the results of the new policy.  What it doesn’t do is expose the real reason why so many schools and districts go along with it:  Money.  Money for the school district and increased salaries for administrators as they work their way up the ladder of conformity.

First of all consider how schools are financed.  In the Republik the district is reimbursed by the state for the number of bodies it has on campus.  In the old days if a student was involved in a fight they would be suspended from school for three days.  The district would lose the money they would have gotten for the bodies in attendance.  Now, instead, the guilty parties are either counseled and returned to class or have what is called “in school suspension” which often means that they get to sit and kibbitz with a sympathetic adult all day.  Thus the school gets the money, the teacher gets the relief and the student has a good time.  Over the long run the students learn that the consequence of anti-social behavior is pleasure not pain.

Then we have the issue of records and how they reflect on the administrator who wants to move up the ladder.  Our district keeps a record of referrals written at each school.  Our school keeps a record of how many written by each teacher.  Lots of referrals means people in power get unhappy.  It makes them look bad.  If you are a new teacher it might mean your job.  If you are an administrator it might mean your promotion.  One way to deal with it is to threaten teachers.  Another, more subtle way, is to “run out” of official referral forms.  When this happens the administration substitutes another form, which we call a “detention slip”, and tells us to use it like a referral.  The issue is that it isn’t.  Since they are not the official form, they don’t get counted.  Everybody wins.

So follow the money.  These Progressives do not care about eggs, only omelets and they believe in their recipe with a religious fervor that makes ISIS look like Junior Varsity. 

homo unius libri