Not sure if they purposely doing these things vs symptoms of dysfunctional government. From what I understand it's basically down to the byzantine politics and dysfunctional infighting and competing priorities. One of the easiest issues to understand is from what I hear is the poor relationship between teachers and "management"(principles and DOE). Then the other is that DOE management doesn't appear to be a promote from within culture based on performance, the real decision makers are political appointments who basically redo everything from scratch when they're in. Maybe the best analogy is that the school system is as dysfunctional as the MTA except the definition of success is made even muddier. Then in my opinion I feel that the system has grown so big that more authority should be given to local schools and local elected officials. The DOE and political appointee are too far removed from the neighborhoods which are basically cities onto themselves population wise.