Last night, in a fit of boredom, I was navigating around my old high school’s website. I was looking at the teacher list to see who was still there 10 years after I had graduated. I saw a few familiar names, but not too many. However, what stood out to me was the number of teachers in each discipline.
I believe the enrollment is about 1500 students. In Montgomery County Maryland, I believe 4 years of math and science are required, so every student must take one course in math and science every year. I counted 14 math teachers and 11 science teachers. So each math/science teacher is responsible for more than 100 students EACH. On top of that, they make teachers do a whole bunch of other bullshit activities (e.g. lunch duty, chaperoning), because they are free to the school system. This is due to the fact that concept of opportunity cost is lost upon most bureaucrats.
After that I was looking around to see what the biggest department was and…drum roll please…special education! There are 36 special education teachers compared to 25 math and science teachers. Now, special education may have more part time teachers, but that is still an absurd ratio. Also, the students requiring special education must be a smaller percentage. I’ll throw out a guess of around 10%. So that would be 36 teachers for 150 students or around a 5:1 student to teacher ratio. Sounds pretty good compared to 100:1.
So whats the priority of the public education system…egalitarianism! Can’t leave any student behind any others!
Posted by samduvall 