Comments
Listed in chronological order. Newest comments at the end.

Chuck, at the jump there was no high-sounding, rationalization of Syron's pay. Lot's of rich crooks do offer dumb explainations of why they deserved the money, but these guys are mostly former advisors to America's political elite, and despite not knowing much of anything about the mortgage business, presumably know when to shut up.

Remember this whenever someone tells you that we waste too much money on education and it should be run more like a business!

I find that the public educators do a much better job of wasting money than the local businesses and private educators in my corner of the world. Example: Local public HS spends 3x per student than the local private HS, 20% take the ACT with an average score of 21. At the local private HS, 80% take the ACT with an average score of 26....This year there was a huge scandal of public school teachers and aides taking off a record amount of sick days. Another local, more rural public school district hired a special kindergarten art teacher with a egregiously high "specialty" salary. I don't think that one needs an art degree to make macaroni pictures!

Throwing more money at the public schools is obviously not the answer. Requiring accountability in the form of standarized goals and acceptable behavior amongst students would be a great first step, but even better would be a glorification of academic and scholarly role models instead of movie stars and sports personalities.

1) Since you don't actually specify the two HS in you example you need to examine the students who attend each HS. I would be that the public HS has a higher rate of poverty, higher rate of non-English speakers, higher rate of parents lacking a HS diploma and a lower rate of parents who have attended/graduated from college/university. The money that private HS charge parents keeps most of these children out of the private school and only allows those "more likely" to succeed to enroll. Also you can research 95/5 ratios to see that those who score better than 95% of other students are usually funded 2.5X(nationally YMMV) more than those who score better than 5% of other students.

2) Teacher have a certain number of days allowed for illness and personal reasons. Just as any employee with a contract is permitted they may make use of all of them. If they go over that limit the principal or vice principal can write them up just like any other job. It can also be grounds for termination just like any other job.

3) That art teacher was not hire by other teachers or the teachers union that was most likely done as a favor by the principal or the school district.

4) Unfortunately parents don't want to take responsibility for their children. It is much easier to blame teachers than society, politicians, school boards/districts, administrators, parents and THE STUDENTS for what is wrong with education.

1. The beauty of my two example HS is simply that their demographics are very similar: both are blue collar and lower middle class white collar students, both are in similar areas and are actually not far from each other and both have similar issues with drugs and violence. The "elitist theory" doesn't hold up here because ability to pay does not equal ability to compete. In my grade school, I was the best student in my class, but I was the only one who could not afford to attend the private HS. There were two remedial, borderline special ed students in my class of 8 who did attend the private HS. My youngest brother, who did attend the private HS, found the same mix of the student body. We attended school and church with the private HS students and played in the neighborhood with the public school ones. The only major difference between the schools is that the private HS was fed from the local, church-run private grade schools and the public HS was fed from the local public grade schools. The public school children did not have the same basic grounding (including knowledge of parts of speech in English and basic math tables) which crippled them in HS and beyond. My father sat on the Board of Ed for the private grade schools and the public HS (at different times)so it was interesting to get an administrative perspective on the issues at work.

2. The teachers and aides missed about double the amount of allowed days at an overrun of several hundred thousand dollars to the district, but the teachers' union threatened to sue for any reprimands issued. So the students suffered and the teachers got off scott free. Mind you, most of the issue was with a select group of 100-200 people, but still. The bonus is that most of the time off was not for legitimate reasons!

3. The district administrator hired the art teacher on the advice of his over-worked teaching staff and told the Board of Ed to suck it up and find $50K-$70K to pay for her. My father who was on the Board at the time (2007) suggested that the adm. to rescind her hiring, but was overruled. Main Street in their town is a ghost town because no one can afford the 30% tax hike to pay for this foolishness.

4. I agree, parents should look beyond Johnny got an "A" so therefore he must be a good student and learning something. Public school teachers here are not allowed to let students fail which is something that is critical to their development. That is partly due to helicopter parents and partly due to political social dictates, which need to be changed. Failure is a dare to do better and achievement is the ultimate pat on the back.