Declining education quality: too many admin staff and asst. principals

[Anonymous]

Here it is for MCPS:

https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/county.pdf

11,762 teachers
7,134 non-teachers

= 38% of employees are not in teaching positions. Note this includes buliding services, cafeteria, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here it is for MCPS:

https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/county.pdf

11,762 teachers
7,134 non-teachers

= 38% of employees are not in teaching positions. Note this includes buliding services, cafeteria, etc.

Schools need maintenance and cafeteria workers.

Is there a number or % for the “central administration”?

[Anonymous]

What counts as admin staff beyond principal and VP?

Schools have taken on much more responsibilities way beyond education. Maybe that has something to do with it? Lots of kids have IEPs and 504s that need to be dealt with now. Schools now have to have multiple aides, behavioral therapist, psychologists, social workers, and so on. Schools have taken on kids’ mental health problems, their medical problems, providing breakfast and lunch and sometimes weekend meals, winter coats, shoes. So much more. We are expecting way too much out of schools. Schools should be to educate. That is it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

At my current school, there are too many admin, and each of them is scurrying to show that their post is relevant. In my school, high school teachers share a common calendar and work together to ensure that students don't have major assessments on the same day or near the same day when possible. None of the members of our bloated admin staff have the same consideration for teachers as they all rush to create new "initiatives" and processes and meetings.

This right here. My small Title I ES has 2 admin and 4 nebulous facilitators who do not work with students and are instead supposed to be supporting teachers in improving their practice. What it really means is those 6 people spend an awful lot of time making tasks for us to do in meeting after meeting without ever working with students or in a classroom so they can see just how desperately our kids need more effective help. Their suggestions are great in theory but not in practice and most of them do not have proven experience improving a school like ours. My “planning time” is spent doing tasks they make them look and feel good without actually helping accelerate the growth of my students who are YEARS below grade level.

+1000

And these are the people who are in charge of "assessing" teachers.

20 years ago, I had so much more time to actually read and produce meaningful feedback on my high school English students' writing. All that planning time has been jerked away from me, to the point that it now takes me weeks to get papers back, and my feedback is often rushed and not as useful. Admin don't care! They are happy that I am attending so many meetings, and that I am doing so many stupid tasks that have nothing to do with actually teaching or planning or grading, because they don't understand what teaching actually entails.

I am the one who mentioned the stupid Monday morning before-school meeting about "team building" for teachers. Let me tell you what this meeting entails. Last Monday, I arrived early before school and hurried to the designated meeting room. First we stood around a big table heaped with Christmas cookies and grapes for ten minutes; everyone was to tired and annoyed to actually eat anything. Some of us chatted about all the things we had to do that we wished we were allowed to actually do instead of this. Then, we were put into pairs and given some strips of paper to draw and read at our partner. Mine directed me to ask my partner, a teacher I work with every day, what her favorite song is and why. Then she asked me what color I would be if I were a color, and why. Then a pointless, cheery pep talk from an admin about how we are all rockstars and he knows it will be a busy week but we can do it! Then we all rushed, stressed and thinking about the long week ahead, to our classrooms for homeroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

At my current school, there are too many admin, and each of them is scurrying to show that their post is relevant. In my school, high school teachers share a common calendar and work together to ensure that students don't have major assessments on the same day or near the same day when possible. None of the members of our bloated admin staff have the same consideration for teachers as they all rush to create new "initiatives" and processes and meetings.

This right here. My small Title I ES has 2 admin and 4 nebulous facilitators who do not work with students and are instead supposed to be supporting teachers in improving their practice. What it really means is those 6 people spend an awful lot of time making tasks for us to do in meeting after meeting without ever working with students or in a classroom so they can see just how desperately our kids need more effective help. Their suggestions are great in theory but not in practice and most of them do not have proven experience improving a school like ours. My “planning time” is spent doing tasks they make them look and feel good without actually helping accelerate the growth of my students who are YEARS below grade level.

+1000

And these are the people who are in charge of "assessing" teachers.

20 years ago, I had so much more time to actually read and produce meaningful feedback on my high school English students' writing. All that planning time has been jerked away from me, to the point that it now takes me weeks to get papers back, and my feedback is often rushed and not as useful. Admin don't care! They are happy that I am attending so many meetings, and that I am doing so many stupid tasks that have nothing to do with actually teaching or planning or grading, because they don't understand what teaching actually entails.

I am the one who mentioned the stupid Monday morning before-school meeting about "team building" for teachers. Let me tell you what this meeting entails. Last Monday, I arrived early before school and hurried to the designated meeting room. First we stood around a big table heaped with Christmas cookies and grapes for ten minutes; everyone was to tired and annoyed to actually eat anything. Some of us chatted about all the things we had to do that we wished we were allowed to actually do instead of this. Then, we were put into pairs and given some strips of paper to draw and read at our partner. Mine directed me to ask my partner, a teacher I work with every day, what her favorite song is and why. Then she asked me what color I would be if I were a color, and why. Then a pointless, cheery pep talk from an admin about how we are all rockstars and he knows it will be a busy week but we can do it! Then we all rushed, stressed and thinking about the long week ahead, to our classrooms for homeroom.

Oh, and to add to my previous comment, the admin who orchestrates these stupid meetings and iniatives has no student contect himself, and has a much higher salary than any teacher.

Do you know what would be a better use of that money going to retaining a person for such a role? Hiring one or two additional teachers to work with students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

At my current school, there are too many admin, and each of them is scurrying to show that their post is relevant. In my school, high school teachers share a common calendar and work together to ensure that students don't have major assessments on the same day or near the same day when possible. None of the members of our bloated admin staff have the same consideration for teachers as they all rush to create new "initiatives" and processes and meetings.

This right here. My small Title I ES has 2 admin and 4 nebulous facilitators who do not work with students and are instead supposed to be supporting teachers in improving their practice. What it really means is those 6 people spend an awful lot of time making tasks for us to do in meeting after meeting without ever working with students or in a classroom so they can see just how desperately our kids need more effective help. Their suggestions are great in theory but not in practice and most of them do not have proven experience improving a school like ours. My “planning time” is spent doing tasks they make them look and feel good without actually helping accelerate the growth of my students who are YEARS below grade level.

+1000

And these are the people who are in charge of "assessing" teachers.

20 years ago, I had so much more time to actually read and produce meaningful feedback on my high school English students' writing. All that planning time has been jerked away from me, to the point that it now takes me weeks to get papers back, and my feedback is often rushed and not as useful. Admin don't care! They are happy that I am attending so many meetings, and that I am doing so many stupid tasks that have nothing to do with actually teaching or planning or grading, because they don't understand what teaching actually entails.

I am the one who mentioned the stupid Monday morning before-school meeting about "team building" for teachers. Let me tell you what this meeting entails. Last Monday, I arrived early before school and hurried to the designated meeting room. First we stood around a big table heaped with Christmas cookies and grapes for ten minutes; everyone was to tired and annoyed to actually eat anything. Some of us chatted about all the things we had to do that we wished we were allowed to actually do instead of this. Then, we were put into pairs and given some strips of paper to draw and read at our partner. Mine directed me to ask my partner, a teacher I work with every day, what her favorite song is and why. Then she asked me what color I would be if I were a color, and why. Then a pointless, cheery pep talk from an admin about how we are all rockstars and he knows it will be a busy week but we can do it! Then we all rushed, stressed and thinking about the long week ahead, to our classrooms for homeroom.

Oh, and to add to my previous comment, the admin who orchestrates these stupid meetings and iniatives has no student contect himself, and has a much higher salary than any teacher.

Do you know what would be a better use of that money going to retaining a person for such a role? Hiring one or two additional teachers to work with students.

*contact (please excuse my rage typos)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is absolutely true.

I'm a high school teacher and have taught in multiple schools. There is an inverse relationship between the quality of education/time+resources teachers are given to plan/teach and the proportion of admin to teaching staff.

At my current school, there are too many admin, and each of them is scurrying to show that their post is relevant. In my school, high school teachers share a common calendar and work together to ensure that students don't have major assessments on the same day or near the same day when possible. None of the members of our bloated admin staff have the same consideration for teachers as they all rush to create new "initiatives" and processes and meetings.

In the past week I had: one meeting early in the morning before school on Monday, one meeting after school on Tuesday, one Wednesday morning meeting before school and then an after school meeting also on Wednesday. The Monday meeting, held EVERY Monday morning, is led by an admin who is focusing on "team building" among teaching teams, and is largely pointless, with snacks and stupid party games ("ice breakers" for teachers who already know each other and work together). Meanwhile, I have hours of grading to do, and it would happen a lot faster, with more thorough feedback, if I could just be allowed to use my non-contact time to work.

There are multiple online training courses our school randomly signed up all high school teachers to complete over the course of the last semester, with no consultation with us about when the best time to do this would be. The courses are not subject specific, but involve things related to DEI, etc. They are fluffy and very time-consuming, and we are expected to complete them outside of school. One, which I am only now finishing, involved a great deal of reading and many written responses and tasks. I have a Masters degree, and I maintain this course required the same amount of reading and writing as a college course. I did NOT have time to adequately provide feedback on my students' writing AND do this course, so the grading suffered. Admin is fine with this: they don't care about grading/feedback because they are completely out of touch with what it is like to be in the classroom, or the implications of taking away high school teachers' time to plan and grade. These stupid courses are the brain child of one admin, who is making this part of his job.

You might be thinking, what about this woman's planning time during the day? Don't high school teachers get planning periods? The truth is that I don't really get planning periods in the day anymore because my school has apparently decided that this year they are no going to make much effort to procure subs for coverage. Instead, they like to pop by my room in the morning to "ask" me to cover for a colleague during my planning that day because "You have period 4 free." ("Free?" FREE? That is my PLANNING TIME).

I am stressed and unhappy

I’m so sorry. Why don’t all these admin get pulled into sub instead of other teachers when there’s a sub shortage?

My kids teachers have expressed frustration with all the meetings, testing and intercom announcements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is absolutely true.

I'm a high school teacher and have taught in multiple schools. There is an inverse relationship between the quality of education/time+resources teachers are given to plan/teach and the proportion of admin to teaching staff.

At my current school, there are too many admin, and each of them is scurrying to show that their post is relevant. In my school, high school teachers share a common calendar and work together to ensure that students don't have major assessments on the same day or near the same day when possible. None of the members of our bloated admin staff have the same consideration for teachers as they all rush to create new "initiatives" and processes and meetings.

In the past week I had: one meeting early in the morning before school on Monday, one meeting after school on Tuesday, one Wednesday morning meeting before school and then an after school meeting also on Wednesday. The Monday meeting, held EVERY Monday morning, is led by an admin who is focusing on "team building" among teaching teams, and is largely pointless, with snacks and stupid party games ("ice breakers" for teachers who already know each other and work together). Meanwhile, I have hours of grading to do, and it would happen a lot faster, with more thorough feedback, if I could just be allowed to use my non-contact time to work.

There are multiple online training courses our school randomly signed up all high school teachers to complete over the course of the last semester, with no consultation with us about when the best time to do this would be. The courses are not subject specific, but involve things related to DEI, etc. They are fluffy and very time-consuming, and we are expected to complete them outside of school. One, which I am only now finishing, involved a great deal of reading and many written responses and tasks. I have a Masters degree, and I maintain this course required the same amount of reading and writing as a college course. I did NOT have time to adequately provide feedback on my students' writing AND do this course, so the grading suffered. Admin is fine with this: they don't care about grading/feedback because they are completely out of touch with what it is like to be in the classroom, or the implications of taking away high school teachers' time to plan and grade. These stupid courses are the brain child of one admin, who is making this part of his job.

You might be thinking, what about this woman's planning time during the day? Don't high school teachers get planning periods? The truth is that I don't really get planning periods in the day anymore because my school has apparently decided that this year they are no going to make much effort to procure subs for coverage. Instead, they like to pop by my room in the morning to "ask" me to cover for a colleague during my planning that day because "You have period 4 free." ("Free?" FREE? That is my PLANNING TIME).

I am stressed and unhappy

I’m so sorry. Why don’t all these admin get pulled into sub instead of other teachers when there’s a sub shortage?

My kids teachers have expressed frustration with all the meetings, testing and intercom announcements.

I’m a different teacher, but I’ll answer that:

We were told administrators can’t help with sub duty because they have to be available in case there is a need.

So teachers sub during our precious planning periods and admin sit around in case they need to do work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know I love graphs that don't cite their source and have unreadable labels!

It isn't hard to find the original source:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d23/tables/dt23_213.10.asp

Fall 2000 Teachers 2.9 million; 2022 Teachers 3.2 Million That is an increase of 10 percent

Fall 2000 Principals and Vice Principals - 142,000; Fall 2022 - 197,000 That is an increase of 39%

Fall 2000 District Instructional Coordinators (these people do NOT teacher they get paid to "instruct"/mandate busy work for teachers to do) 39 k; Fall 2022 101k. That is an increase of 159%

Fall 2000 District Adminstrators 58k; Fall 2022 -89K. That is an increase of 53%

[Anonymous]

I added the percentages and what isn't accounted for is that there are now so many teachers who do NOT teach any students. They are "instructional coaches" or "teachers on special assignment" who come in and tell teachers how to teacher and mandate busy work.

These instructional coaches should be intervention teachers taking out the lowest performing students and working with them instead of telling teachers how to help them but provide no actual extra time for the teacher to do so. Or they should be put in an English and Math teachers so that English and math classes have fewer students per teacher.

Look at a school with 1000 students and 30 students per class. A school would need about 7 English teachers, so each English teacher has to teacher about 150 students if they have 5 sections/periods If you make the assigned literacy English coach go back and teach English now you have 8 teachers. Class sizes would be 26 to 27 students instead of 30. This might not seem like much but it really does make a difference. And across 5 classes to have to grade 15-20 fewer essays is huge.

Or you could have that extra teacher be an essay grader where they actually have the time to make comments on essays.

Or you could target 9th grade and reduce English class size to 18-20 for 9th grade so students get a strong start for high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

At my current school, there are too many admin, and each of them is scurrying to show that their post is relevant. In my school, high school teachers share a common calendar and work together to ensure that students don't have major assessments on the same day or near the same day when possible. None of the members of our bloated admin staff have the same consideration for teachers as they all rush to create new "initiatives" and processes and meetings.

This right here. My small Title I ES has 2 admin and 4 nebulous facilitators who do not work with students and are instead supposed to be supporting teachers in improving their practice. What it really means is those 6 people spend an awful lot of time making tasks for us to do in meeting after meeting without ever working with students or in a classroom so they can see just how desperately our kids need more effective help. Their suggestions are great in theory but not in practice and most of them do not have proven experience improving a school like ours. My “planning time” is spent doing tasks they make them look and feel good without actually helping accelerate the growth of my students who are YEARS below grade level.

I used to work in FCPS about 10 years ago, and it was the same. We had classes with too many kids and then "coaches" walking around making more work for everyone, pulling a single kid or special "enrichment" group here and there, but essentially contributing nothing of value to the school while making more work for the rest of us. Likewise, we had two assistant principals whose main job seemed to be leading fire drills and roaming the school in search of teachers to criticize for something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

At my current school, there are too many admin, and each of them is scurrying to show that their post is relevant. In my school, high school teachers share a common calendar and work together to ensure that students don't have major assessments on the same day or near the same day when possible. None of the members of our bloated admin staff have the same consideration for teachers as they all rush to create new "initiatives" and processes and meetings.

This right here. My small Title I ES has 2 admin and 4 nebulous facilitators who do not work with students and are instead supposed to be supporting teachers in improving their practice. What it really means is those 6 people spend an awful lot of time making tasks for us to do in meeting after meeting without ever working with students or in a classroom so they can see just how desperately our kids need more effective help. Their suggestions are great in theory but not in practice and most of them do not have proven experience improving a school like ours. My “planning time” is spent doing tasks they make them look and feel good without actually helping accelerate the growth of my students who are YEARS below grade level.

I used to work in FCPS about 10 years ago, and it was the same. We had classes with too many kids and then "coaches" walking around making more work for everyone, pulling a single kid or special "enrichment" group here and there, but essentially contributing nothing of value to the school while making more work for the rest of us. Likewise, we had two assistant principals whose main job seemed to be leading fire drills and roaming the school in search of teachers to criticize for something.

Yes. I have worked at a few schools now that have multiple vice principals per division. They didn't do anything useful, and NEVER subbed. It was so frustrating to learn that I was losing my planning time AGAIN to sub AGAIN for the teacher they knew was going to be out for two weeks (but decided to just achieve coverage for her each day by randomly pulling other teachers out of their planning time). I would see the vice principals wandering around, relaxed and smiling, with coffee in hand, as teachers rushed to and from subbing. I actually worked with the spouse of one of these vice principals once, and he confirmed that his VP wife NEVER took any work home. Did she ever sub? Of course not. She did, however, decide each day which teacher was going to lose their planning time to sub, and she did think up and orchestrate many stupid, pointless extra meetings for teachers to attend before and after school. My favorite was the time she had someone with some kind of crystal "singing bowl" who led us all in meditation. We were all super stressed because we had so much work to do; at the time I was thinking only about the many essays I needed to mark and comment upon at home that week, and how many of them I could have finished at school or just before/after school, if only I were allowed to actually have my planning time to plan and didn't have to attend so many meetings before and after school. Still, for forty minutes we were directed to close our eyes and breath as instructed as the coach struck the stupid crystal singing bowl with a gong.

[Anonymous]

The easy answer to this is to put administrators back in the classroom for one period. So many benefits:
1. They won’t create unnecessary tasks and initiatives if they are also required to follow them
2. They’ll remember the challenges of teaching, which I am certain many have forgotten. This may add to additional support for teachers.
3. They’ll have the chance to demonstrate their own teaching abilities, which may add some legitimacy to observations. It is sometimes hard to take observations seriously when you have 5x the teaching experience than the administrator.
4. They can be put on sub lists just like the rest of the teaching staff, spreading the load.
5. More sections lead to smaller class sizes

Sure, their workloads go up. Since teachers’ workloads always go up, this seems fine to me.

[Anonymous]

7.5% of fcps staff are non-school based.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What counts as admin staff beyond principal and VP?

Schools have taken on much more responsibilities way beyond education. Maybe that has something to do with it? Lots of kids have IEPs and 504s that need to be dealt with now. Schools now have to have multiple aides, behavioral therapist, psychologists, social workers, and so on. Schools have taken on kids’ mental health problems, their medical problems, providing breakfast and lunch and sometimes weekend meals, winter coats, shoes. So much more. We are expecting way too much out of schools. Schools should be to educate. That is it.

County school systems also have entire departments full of “DEI” employees, headed by a Chief DEI Officer, who does . . . what, exactly?