The ladies in the schools themselves aren't as large of a problem as the ones who run the districts. I worked IT in a school district for awhile and the amount of wasted time and money in the Administration office was staggering. I got to spend a lot of time in the schools and the Admin building and, generally, all the people who work in the school buildings are just doing the best they can with what they are given to work with.

No, I was left with the impression that great teachers couldn't be dragged from the classroom for buckets of cash. That's not why they do it. The bad teachers, many of whom really did become teachers because they had nowhere else to go, want out of the classroom as quick as humanly possible. The only place for them to go is Administration.

At least in the districts I worked in, a promotion out of a school meant your starting salary was now higher than any teacher salary in the district. A large district will spend millions a year on Admin salaries that only occasionally step foot in a school.

While I can't say for scientific certainty, I've worked in enough Education environments to see a trend. I know correlation isn't causation, but...I found that workplace politics were the number one determining factor in anything getting done in Admin. They left IT alone, but forget that IT sees all.

So, you have failed teachers who are know in charge of how students are taught. Since they couldn't handle the classroom, they don't understand how to educate children. When you factor in Common Core and No Child Left Behind, even a team of the most competent people would have trouble making that work. We don't have competent people working in schools. They either get marginalized, or pushed out.

These people also tend to branch out into the private industry that caters to schools: Curriculum, technology, etc. These are ALSO the people that interface with government. So the entire power structure of the education system are failed teachers who exploit the system for their own benefit.

This is a bit of hyperbole because there ARE good Administrators out there. They are just the minority and have to struggle with a corrupt system to get anything done.

Don't even get me started on School Boards!