Schools: Recommended Reading: CG Publications: Fact Sheets: Law and Public Education: The Paralyzing Effects of Excessive Bureaucracy

Law and Public Education: The Paralyzing Effects of Excessive Bureaucracy

The nearly endless bureaucratic rules in America's schools prevent teachers and school administrators from effectively creating learning environments. 

Bureaucracy hurts the ability of school administrators to operate public schools.

• 88% of superintendents say "keeping up with all the local, state and federal mandates handed down to the schools takes up way too much time."
• 54% of superintendents and 48% of principals say they "must work around the system" to "get things done the way they want."
• 81% of superintendents and 47% of principals and say "when talented [principals or] superintendents leave the field, they are most likely to do so because they are 'frustrated by politics and bureaucracy.' "

Source: Public Agenda, "Trying to Stay Ahead of the Game: Superintendents and Principals Talk about School Leadership," 2001.

• 67% of superintendents identified meeting state and federal mandates as one of the top five factors inhibiting their effectiveness.

Source: The View from Inside: A Candid Look at Today's School Superintendent, Colorado Association of School Executives, Fall 2003.

Bureaucracy prevents public school teachers from doing their jobs.

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  71.2% of public school teachers agree or strongly agree that "[r]outine duties and paperwork interfere with my job of teaching."

Source: NCES, "Schools and Staffing Survey, 1999-2000:Overview of the Data for Public, Private, Public Charter, and Bureau of Indian Affairs Elementary and Secondary Schools," May 2002, p. 41.

• 44% teachers say the requirements for documenting disciplinary events "go beyond common sense."

Source: Public Agenda, "Teaching Interrupted: Do Discipline Policies in Today's Public Schools Foster the Common Good", May 2004.

• 66% of principals and 63% of superintendents at least somewhat agree that there is so much focus on documentation and due process that it is difficult to take action against students who are discipline problems.

Source: Public Agenda, Rolling Up Their Sleeves: Superintendents and Principals Talk about What's Needed to Fix Public Schools, Nov. 2003.

Bureaucracy prevents school administrators from managing staff.

• Only 24% of superintendents and 32% of principals say they have "enough autonomy to 'reward outstanding teachers and staff.'"
• Only 28% of superintendents and 32% of principals believe they have sufficient authority to remove "ineffective teachers from the classroom."
• 73% of superintendents and 69% of principals say "making it much easier for principals to remove bad teachers--even those who have tenure" would be a "very effective" proposal to improve educational leadership.
• 56% of teachers agree "the tenure system should be changed to make it far easier to remove bad teachers."

Source: Public Agenda, "Trying to Stay Ahead of the Game," 2001, pp. 12-13.

• 59% of teachers report having "a few" colleagues who "fail to do a good job and are simply going through the motions."

Source: Public Agenda, "Stand by Me," 2003, pp. 17, 20-21.

• In one case, it took the Grossmont Union School District in southern California thirteen years and $312,000 in legal costs to fire one teacher for incompetence."

Source: James Payne, "The Agony of Public Education," Fall 2000, p. 272.

• "In the entire state of Florida in 1997, only 0.05 percent of teachers were removed involuntarily from their jobs. Across the state's economy as a whole that year, 7.9 percent of all employees were fired. In two large Georgia counties, not a single tenured teacher was fired from 1995 to 2000. In New York City, where the public schools employ 72,000 teachers, the school board sought to fire three teachers for incompetence in a two-year period. In California, which employs some 350,000 teachers at any given time, only 227 cases reached the final phase of the dismissal process from 1990 to 1999--only one of these from Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the country."

Source: Mike Antonucci, "Teacher Tenure Reform: Mandate or Mirage?" in A Consumer's Guide to Teacher Quality: Opportunity and Challenge in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (National Council on Teacher Quality, May 31, 2002), p. 1.

• "The contract between the Board of Education of New York City and the United Federation of Teachers is 204 pages long."

Source: Dale Ballou, "The New York City Teacher's Union Contract: Shackling Principals' Leadership," Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute (Number 6) June 6, 1999, p. 2.