North Carolina, once seen as the most forward-looking state in the South, has become an educational backwater in recent years, despite winning Race to the Top funding. The governor and legislature have skimped on public schools, cut their budgets, while expanding deregulated charters and introducing vouchers. They even eliminated their own NC Teaching Fellows program to prepare career teachers while spending millions to bring in Teach for America temps. Teachers’ salaries have been flat since 2008, and NC teacher pay dropped from the national average to nearly last in the nation. The state has been experiencing a major brain drain of veteran teachers, under the withering assaults of the legislature and governor.
Last February, the governor announced a pay raise, but only for new teachers. This eases the path for the TFA recruits (the governor’s senior education adviser is a TFA alum).
This week, the governor announced a series of pay raises for all teachers, as well as small increases for textbooks and preschool. He did not explain how he will pay for his proposals. The legislature previously enacted major corporate tax cuts. Some of his proposals involve pay for performance, with increases tied to test scores, a widely discredited approach that has many believers.
Some of the increases fail to restore the previous deep cuts. For example:
“Acknowledging that the deep cuts that have been made to the textbook budget are not good for students, the Governor pledged to double the current textbook budget to $43 million. In 2009, however, the textbook budget was roughly $110 million – the next year it was slashed to just $2.6 million. Early childhood education will receive $3.6 million with the Governor’s proposal, enough for around 700 pre-K slots, which are reserved for low-income children to get a head start on their education. Past years’ cuts in funding have left the pre-K program with significant waiting lists that are in the tens of thousands.”
– See more at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2014/05/08/gov-mccrory-unveils-latest-teacher-pay-and-education-reform-plan/#sthash.oasfgXeJ.dpuf
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pay raise? “pay-ne” raise. Too little, too late, and spent in all the wrong places.
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AMEN, Gordon. You took the words out of my mouth.
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Nothing wrong with trying to tune up the system. But, first do no harm. Remember drivers ed, or I’m sure flying an airplane is similar, gentle inputs. What they did in NC, is shift the car into reverse at 60mph and dropped the transmission on the road. Rookie move.
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Totally rookie move. Absolutely. Bush league, as they say.
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Clearly a lesson in how to totally destroy a democratic public education system and turn children over to profit driven corporations. It wasn’t that long ago that poor parents had to sell their children as young as seven to corporations to work in coal mines, factories and even as prostitutes. Then the progressives had to spoil all that source of easy to contorl cheap labor by passing the 1938 Federal regulation of child labor in the Fair Labor Standards Act. The act failed when voted on in 1937.
This is a first step in saying good to democracy as the door is opened for a total corporate oligarchy to rule the United States.
Why bother having democratic elections? Just have the corporations hire a CEO to run the state.
The CEO wouldn’t even need to live in the state. Maybe Bill Gates would take the job from his home near Seattle. Or how about Rupert Murdock. He has homes in England, China, Australia and America and he could rule over North Caroline as its CEO from any of those locations.
Wait, wait. They could turn North Caroline over to Michelle Rhee and then she could fire all 131,676 of the states employees and turn those jobs over to TFA. Why limit TFA to taking over teaching America’s children? Why not let them run each state too?
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“Despite winning Race to the Top.” I would say “winning” Race to the Top money is part of the problem.
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Difficult to pass up more money, I know, especially since NC teachers are making nearly poverty wages. But they should think carefully before accepting any increases that come with strings such as merit pay or more VAM or whatever.
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Bait, Switch.
Switch, Bait.
Smells fishy — must be an election year …
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Rally last night in Asheville. ALEC member Tim Moffitt was there (Republican from a Buncombe County district being investigated for threatening the Democrat running against him and trying to bribe him with a television job). Apparently he gave a I’m a home grown public school boy, but then said our public schools are not good enough,read a letter by Bob Etheridge from 1995 to illustrate that the poor (read: teachers) will always be with us (this is what I heard; I couldn’t go because my dual language immersion kindergarten was having their musical at the elementary school up the street (to which I have invited Moffitt four times and he has never visited the school, even though it is in his district,but his Democrat opponent has).
http://www.demotix.com/news/4686749/funding-education-education-rally-asheville-north-carolina/all-media
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In other NC news…
This is a complete joke:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/04/30/3823288/nc-bill-would-let-students-attend.html
…and this one is confusing….
I wonder how many days this judge has spent observing a classroom before he decided schools have the resources they need.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/05/08/4897255/too-many-nc-children-arent-receiving.html#.U20lvvldVvU
But Manning said teachers and principals have the tools they need to ensure that students learn to read from kindergarten to third grade. He cited methods of frequent informal testing, with results that are instant and computerized. Many teachers may be conducting the assessments but not using the data to effectively target their lessons to meet individual children’s needs.
‘Use the information’
He minced no words in telling educators what they needed to do. “Bottom line requirement: Do the formative assessment and use the information to tailor instruction to meet the needs of the individual child,” he wrote. “Do not put the data in the folder and continue on with the instruction for the entire class on one level. (What about this do you not understand?)”
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/05/08/4897255/too-many-nc-children-arent-receiving.html#.U20lvvldVvU#storylink=cpy
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As far as the first link, Indiana has had that for a while now. From my understanding, it doesn’t get used very much, except for affluent people who have the means to transport their kid all over the state. It does come in handy though sometimes for people with varying cross-district custody issues – divorce, grandparents raising the child, etc.
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McCrory has flip-flopped on educational issues more times than a fish out of water. We don’t believe him and don’t value his leadership if in fact that is what it is called. He and the legislature have violated the public’s trust. They will not be reelected. I am disgusted with the entire debacle. The elected officials have sold us down the river and we are supposed to just smile, wave, and go quietly. Hell no!
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Wow, what a bunch of ingrates. In almost every other field pay has been FALLING since 2008. The teacher beloved governor bev Perdue didn’t do anything at all for teachers except repeatedly freeze their pay. Finally mcrory comes in and not only gets the blame for low teacher pay but gets no appreciation for actually raising teacher pay.
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