Why is it that the higher up one rises in terms of being an educational decision maker with real power to wield, the further one is distanced from actually working with real kids on a day to day basis?

Kinda weird, huh?

I mean, by this logic — wacky as it is when you really think about it — the ratio works out so that those who make the most influential decisions are the folks that spend the least (if any… and I literally mean, if any) time with real kids in real classrooms.

Let’s break it down in a broad overview…

–Real classroom teachers who work with between 100-200 kids per day. Immense exposure to real kids. Infinitesimal influence over matters of educational policy.

–Principals, Vice Principals and other admins. They see lots of reals kids but all too often it’s from their office windows. (And I question whether or not 50% of America’s administrators could identify, by name, 100 specific kids on campus.) They certainly dictate some policy, but big, big stuff is out of their hands in most cases and they are henchmen for bigger puppet masters in a great many cases.

–District Office Personnel. A healthy amount of power… but many of them go whole weeks at times without talking to any kids at all.

–School Board Members. Also a healthy amount of power. Do they know 50 kids by name? I genuinely wonder.

–County Offices of Education. A bureaucratic jungle where their are more cubicles than actual children.

–State Departments of Education. Now you are talking influence. This is where policy gets made. Kids are talked about every day — but real, live ones made of flesh and bone? Well, at least there are pictures on the walls.

The federal government. (Congress, the U.S. Department of Ed. TheWhite House.) Spectacular influence but they lean heavily on their political aides to give reports (in order to relay salient pieces of information inside 863 page reports such as, “Kids like snacks.”). They believe in kids. They fight for kids. They are the champions of kids. (That should lock up the parent vote, right?)

Thing are outta whack! And why? Cause the higher they rise, the further they are from what they need to see.

A-HA!! I finally figured out when the madness of NCLB will end. Now I am not sure I know how to to do the math properly, but I think it works out to something like this:

There are 26 letters in the alphabet. If you multiply 26 x 26 that means there are 676 possible two-letter combinations of acronyms to which they can ascribe names of punch-drunk policy.

This means that once NCLB hit the 677th clownish matter of educational legislation that requires an acronym, the system shuts down and we, the teachers are freed from this buffoonish dungeon.

Unfortunately, NCLB is a 4-letter acronym which means that they actually have 456,976 potential matters of acronym-al policy to work through before we are all free. (26 x 26 x 26 x 26). There’s good news and bad news in that.

The bad news: we still have a few hundred thousand more clodhopper mandates to work through before we are off this preposterous hook.

The worse news: sometimes they use 5 letter acronyms so we’re gonna have to multiply it again by another 26.

The good news… well, there ain’t much because I think they’ll start incorporating numbers once they recognize this flaw in the system… so just like the web gave birth to web 2. so too, will we one day be faced with NCLB 1.5 — it’ll try to be twice as good but it’ll fall half as short.

The only guarantee: it’ll be 1.5 times as maddening. Cubed! (That’s 3.375 times as loony if you multiply 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5. — which is really the only guarantee in the whole post.)

School budgets need to be cut! But you better not shortchange MY child’s education. This is the schizophrenic mantra being shouted by policy-making parents today.

On one hand, when they put on their bean counter hats, they see the excess, the fluff, the areas which can “justifiably” be scaled back. On the other hand, when they wear the hat of a being a parent and they look at the education that their own flesh and blood are getting in our schools, suddenly it’s a whole different tune we hear being sung.

Art and music are expendable, non-core luxuries when policy decisions are being made for other people’s children. But when it comes to their own kids, if they don’t have flutes, paint, percussion, and piano, they bark the accusation, “What kind of Neanderthal schooling is being provided by you philistines!?”

If only the folks that made the decisions as to what’s best for other people’s kids viewed these decisions through the prism of how they would evaluate the very same questions when applied through the lens of “What would be best for my own kids?” things would be so much different.

When we start to educate our kids as if they really are “our” kids — and not the kids of “other” people — we are going to make a heck of leap forward in national education policy.

Am I really supposed to take away a kid’s cell phone from them? I mean official school policy says NO CELL PHONES.

Yet virtually very kid on campus has one. And they make no bones about the fact that their phones are more than just phones — their phones are central conduits to how they live their lives.

To take away their cell phone makes me an instant jerk. And who is going to allow themselves to actually listen to and learn from a total jerk?

On the other hand, school’s cannot function without rules. Simply put, it’d be anarchy. Chaos. Pandemonium!(Not so unlike how it is now anyway, right?)

But rules are essential. A classroom without procedures, guidelines, and matters of protocol is a classroom that is going to implode.

So, does this mean school rules are optional, that I get to follow the ones that make sense to me and disregard teh ones that do not?

Well, if you ask my principal, my district superintendent or anyone at the state department of education, most certainly not.

But if you ask a teacher down the hall, a frontline soldier who has to actually work where the rubber meets the road, you are going to get an entirely different answer.

And you know what? Both sides are 100% right! That’s what so maddening about public education today. School boards and administration need to set policy and that policy needs to be followed in order for campuses to function. Otherwise, it’s a disaster.

But teachers who blindly follow non-sensible policies do so to the detriment of their kids… and that’s an even worse disaster.

So, do I confiscate the phone? If I do, I lose the kid. If I don’t, I am yet another rebel teacher who doesn’t buy into sending the kids one straightforward, unmixed message about matters of behavior on campus. I am the guy who clearly puts it out there that school rules are optional, subjective, dependent on individual circumstances and not really rules, but more like guidelines, take them or leave them.

Kids wear hats. It’s a violation of school policy. I never take a kid’s hat. Why? Because I care more about what’s going on underneath the hat.

Kid’s have face piercings. Like I really want to extract a nosering from a teenager’s nostril in the middle of 3rd period.

Kids bring drugs to school. I bust them with these — and I bust them… and good.

Weapons, too.

Spray paint cans, too.

But girls who wear shorts that are not quite to fingertips length down their sides? Whatever, I have other battles to wage.

And so I wonder, without any sort of real answer to this question, are school rules subjective and open to teacher interpretation?