Far-right Governor Pat McCrory has brought in an aggressive leader for his strategy to privatize public education and dismantle the teaching profession. That is Eric Guckian, the governor’s tip advisor on demolishing–re, transforming –North Carolina’s education system.
Guckian is a TFA alum with long experience in the corporate reform movement. He wants “an aggressive K-12charter school environment in the state.”
At a meeting of the governor’s task force on education (which has no teachers on it), “Guckian presented five pathways for education in North Carolina that included a call to dismantle walls and textbooks for “digital online solutions;” having the business community play a larger role in developing educational pathways; job-embedded professional training for teachers; and basing teachers’ salaries on their “outputs in the field.” You can see where this is heading: profits for corporations, a welcome mat for for-profit virtual providers, and no professional preparation for teachers.
A proposal–Senate Bill 337–is already in the works in the ALEC-dominated Legislature to set up a charter commission that takes supervision and authorization of charters away from the State Board of Education and gives it to a new charter-friendly board. This charter board will be able to authorize charters over the opposition of local school boards. Senate Bill 337 is extreme in its commitment to deregulation. Charters would be able to take any unused public space for only $1. They would not be subject to conflict of interest laws. Their employees would not be required to pass criminal background checks. Their teachers would not require certification of any kind. High school teachers need not be college graduates. They would be relieved of diversity requirements.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In one of the linked articles, the governor lists the five goals of this cabinet. The first is, “Develop a brand, objectives and goals for North Carolina education.”
We already have a brand and this cabinet is sure to continue it.
Their mission statement seems to be, HOW LOW CAN WE GO, NC!
If there was a way out for me and my colleagues, we’d take it. At this point, I don’t think any state is doing right by its kids and teachers, but NC is definitely not “the education leader of the world,” unless that means leading the path to the destruction of public education in our right to work state.
Remind me again, Diane, that positive changes are happening. From my perspective, good things are being crushed by destructive things like this governor’s arrogant policies. Will our efforts, no matter how righteous, be too little, too late?
Kindergeek,
Don’t lose hope. The wheel turns. Ideologues like your governor and legislator always overplay their hand, and in time (hopefully soon) the electorate realizes these guys are not serving their interest but just taking care of their cronies. Their day on the hill will come to an end. You have to get involved and make that day come sooner rather than later. Bad things don’t last forever, but they don’t end by themselves. They end by people taking action.
I agree that this is 100% better than the ‘One-Size Fits All” Testing Mania that now exists in NC.
Curriculum Development is needed to meet the needs of ALL STUDENTS!!!
4) Prioritize workforce talent development. The Cabinet will consult with the Commerce Department to incorporate recruiting and marketing initiatives in curriculum development to ensure future market employment needs are met. – See more at: http://www.governor.state.nc.us/newsroom/press-releases/20130417/governor-mccrory-convenes-education-cabinet-directs-group-develop#sthash.GApnBH8E.dpuf
I don’t see this as fixing the testing mania in NC. Very confused by your comment, neander.
4) Prioritize workforce talent development. The Cabinet will consult with the Commerce Department to incorporate recruiting and marketing initiatives in curriculum development to ensure future market employment needs are met
I am also confused by the comment since testing was not mentioned in the article. The testing mania is a nationwide issue.
I recently saw a bumper sticker that read:
“Well, at least we are winning the War on Education”
That is truly SAD if anyone believes NC is winning the war on education.
Depends on how you define “on”. I take it to be a tongue-in-cheek message that we have successfully defeated education.
Dienne, you made an excellent point.
And now that Duncan has given states powers to destroy teachers, he is now back peddling and telling states they can hold off. Wonder what stone was hanging over his head when he made that announcement. Could it be that the backlash is also taking aim at Obama’s polling numbers?? Of course he has the power to tell each and every state that they cannot use testing to evaluate teachers, but he will never go that far, and neither will states like NC, NY, Florida, Tennessee and Louisiana give up a chance to fire teachers. It’s all about creating a new workforce of teachers… Obedient and expendable, but most of all cheap labor.
I taught in a school, yes a public school in which about 75% of the staff were first or second year teachers. Most of them were TFA. NC is building a new workforce. It seems that there is a strong push to get the veteran teachers OUT!
I don’t believe that parents here would accept replacing career teachers with temps.
How is TFA sold to parents?
I know why politicians love temps, cheaper to pay and completely powerless, but if they were to replace 75% of teachers here with temps there would be resistance.
Is this announced publicly?
Most parents don’t know or don’t care. There were several resignations during the year and many resignations at the end of the year. This is a school in which 90% receive free or reduced lunch and 98% are African-American or Hispanic. Historically, it’s a low-performing school. TFA only have to commit to two years.
It’s about saving money on pensions and benefits. Nothing more, nothing less.
The polkiticians are counting on traditional public schools to appear to be failures and use it for their personal advantage. However, as long as we stay on the course of returning to the failed schools of the past, we will appear self serving and they will continue to win. Unless we step forward with drastic improvement suggestions, we deserve to be closed.
It’s time to support true systemic change with individualized schools that support creativity through the arts and other means, take kids from where they are, and teach in the way they learn best. Learning is an individual thing , not a standardized thing.
Too low expectations for one, might be too high for another. Too low expectations slows learning while too high expectations pushes kids out of school. High expectations are individual. Take kids from where they are, not where we wish they were.
What “failed schools of the past”? Take the propaganda elsewhere.
It is simply amazing that they can’t sell charters without going around not one, but TWO regulatory and oversight mechanisms.
If a local school board doesn’t want charters and the state board doesn’t want charters, the solution from reformers was to install a rubber stamp “special board”?
Pretty funny coming from “market based” reformers. Charters apparently can’t compete in an ordinary democratic process, they need a leg up, a ridiculously tilted playing field.
If you’re not winning, rig the rules!
How much oversight is the specially chosen charter board going to provide?
The anti-democratic tactics and rule-rigging charters rely on are acreal window into the mindset of reformers. No one who was legitimately interested in merit would set up such a lax, opaque and easily-gamed process.
There may be nothing greater in the threat to public education than the North Carolina GOP. What a bunch of frauds. Hey NSA, you got a few minutes? Do some background checking on the members of the hand-picked “special board” and it should become painfully obvious, even to folks such as neanderthal, what the real motive is. What a damn farce! They are circumventing democracy as we know it.
“At a meeting of the governor’s task force on education (which has no teachers on it),”
Says it all doesn’t it?
Plenty of liberals in my town send their children to charter schools. In some respects, this is a case of giving the people what they want. I don’t agree with it, but I don’t think the conservatives are totally to blame for this.
Iheartdurham, this is how the conservatives ensnare liberal into supporting privatization, consumerism, and me-first, while abandoning the common good.
Totally. I see it in Asheville a lot
It isn’t “giving people what they want.” This has been created solely by politicians in bed with billionaires and industrialists who want to steal public money for private gain. Charter schools are a cancer and need to be abolished.
As far as I know, no one is forcing anyone in my town to enter charter lotteries and plenty of them do (and are downright gleeful when they “win” a spot). I will not put all the blame on the evil conservatives when very smart people are “choosing” charter schools. I am not a fan of charter schools, but parents have to bear some of the responsibility for what is happening.
Asheville has liberals in love with charters too. OK so in my opinion it is time for professors in the Education depts and colleges at UNC (all campuses), ECU, ASU, Western, Mars Hill, Gardner Webb etc to start shouting!! This threatens them too.
Charters are failures and scams. There is not a single bit of evidence they are better, just as there is no evidence at all private schools are better than public.
Chicago is the next breeding ground for Charters. All those closed schools will be able to be bought up for one dollar (yes, $1.00), the kids will get vouchers to “choose” what school to go to. Private schools will still be too expensive (and may raise tuition just because they can) so an artificial demand will be created. As a result, schools will be re-segregated, and in states like North Carolina, students will have inexperienced, non-certified teachers who’ve had no background checks.
Seriously, only in Bizarro World would this be the answer to “fix” public education.
In 2000, the UK government established a large scale charter school system called “Academy Schools.” This was done with nearly identical set of rationales and expectations we now are hearing here in the US to expand taxpayer funding more K-12 charter schools.
The UK government’s Academy Commission has release the first longitudinal study/report on the results the UK experiment with a charter school system. Below are few excerpts from the report on the UK’s decade long experiment with expanding charter schools.
“The commission found that, with the move to academy status the system was becoming unacceptably complex for parents to navigate. This had serious implications for genuine parental choice, social justice and system-wide improvement.”
“The commission regards this position as an unsustainable system of individual funding agreements, which breeds confusion as well as a lack of openness and transparency. With no local mechanisms for community and stakeholder engagement, whistle blowing or parental complaints (especially important in an autonomous system), there is a serious democratic deficit.”
The UK Academy Commission is composed of members of the their Royal Academies (similar to the US National Research Council, the US Academies of Science, Medicine, etc.) as well as (somewhat oddly?) the CEO of “Teach First” (the UK division of the Teach for America Corporation) funded in the UK by Accenture, Google, Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble to name some of their top “Platinum contributors”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/jan/24/academy-school-system-heading-rocks