For many years, North Carolina had a national reputation as the most progressive state in the South. Its leaders worked across party lines to increase educational opportunity and improve the schools. Now, however, the Governor and the Legislature are in a race to the bottom. Teachers’ salaries are near the bottom of the nation. The exodus of experienced teachers is at a historic high. The legislature has funded charters and vouchers, in an effort to defund and harm public schools.
Matt Caggia, a social studies teacher in Wake County, describes this bizarre situation, in which the legislature puts corporations first and students last.
For a comprehensive summary of the damage done to public education in North Carolina by its elected officials, read this article by Duke University economist Helen Ladd and her husband Edward Fiske, former education editor of the Néw York Times.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I dunno, these days there’s fierce competition for who’s trying the hardest to fall the behindest.
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Exactly, though in trying to cater to business over education, they forget that businesses need good employees, and employees have families, and families want good schools…..so why would anyone want to transfer their family to a state, to work for a company, when the schools, basically, sucked? I sure wouldn’t.
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Exactly
Brian Turner has said that very thing. Hope he wins in 116 Tuesday.
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1. ALEC
2. Race to the Top.
I think that’s it. It boils down to that.
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Well and the state lottery and racism don’t help anything.
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I don’t claim to understand the whys but I do know that we are in some serious sewage. We have less people to work with more students along with new “solutions” to implement which require massive amounts of individual student and teacher time to collect DATA while the other 20 something plus students are left to teach themselves. It will be interesting to see how teachers are held accountable for test scores of students who have taught themselves.
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A 27-y.o. local NJ math teacher told me his 25 y.o. engr brother was thinking seriously about relocating to NC (due, as these things go, to an important girlfriend). I suggested his brother check out the public school situation in NC. Later, the brothers assured me that things were still OK in the Raleigh-Durham area…
Meanwhile I have a 50-something friend who manhandled her ailing-health perhaps soon to early-retire husband into ‘downsizing’ [to an equally-huge house at half the price] in NC (her at-home on-the-computer-plus-traveling job allows her to pull in the same salary in NC as in NJ).
Adding to that the various NJ-ites I’ve known over recent yrs whose parents or they themselves have retired to NJ because the COL is so much lower (thanks no doubt in part to the obliteration of NC public schools)…
Wondering if maybe the long-term plan of those in the statehouse is to maintain only a foothold in the academic world, e.g., Raleigh-Durham, meanwhile let the local folks become subservient to the [generally very conservative] whims of a retiree economy– a la Florida?
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Our NC Constitution does not allow for the same tax structure Florida has. Florida sustains itself because so many people go there to die, and there is a tax when they do. So right away there is that structural difference. Furthermore, Research Triangle Park, situated between Duke, NC State and UNC is immense. I have lived in Florida (was born there) and NC and we are not on a path to be like them, albeit some do drool over that and take actions as if we will be. But we won’t.
We must fight in NC to preserve what we have.
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“the brothers assured me that things were still OK in the Raleigh-Durham area…” Don’t assume this. NC has more than 100 school districts, and Raleigh (Wake County) and Durham (Durham County) are separate. Wake arguably is better than Durham. Better still is Chapel Hill-Carrboro, which is nearby but is also separate and not in either county system. It may be that the brothers are basing this on the presence of the universities and Research Triangle Park. Those things certainly help, but again, I wouldn’t assume every district in the Triangle is worth moving to.
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Durham is best. They were the first district to reject TFA. Good community.
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NCLB was the devils seed that began this decline into dysfunction that has now destroyed public education in the US and our children in the process.
It is a mystery why someone with Diane Ravitch’s educational expertise could not have realized the potential for damage from the start, rather than helping Bush implement this destructive experiment onto America’s children. Is it guilt that motivates Ms Ravitch’s obsession with trying to undo the damage? It is obviously too late.
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Barb, I don’t think that it is too late.
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Diane worked with the first Bush administration – George H.W. Bush, the 41st president – which was long before NCLB during the Bush 43 regime. I don’t believe Diane had any role in Bush 43’s regime.
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Or RttT.
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As I responded to this response in another of Diane’s posts:
I’m sure that you, Barb, have never changed your mind, thoughts, being when shown to have been wrong. Oh to be so steadfast in one’s belief. Are you a god?
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Heath Morrison has just resigned.
The talent is leaving exactly as the reformers have planned. As schools suffer, it serves as proof that we need more “reform”.
Hard to imagine how far the Tar Heel State has fallen! Watch out Mississippi and Louisiana, NC & NJ are embracing reform and coming after you!
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