Stuart Egan is a high school teacher in Clemmons, North Carolina. This letter is addressed to a key Republican who is leading the charge to shift more public funds to privately managed charter schools.
This is an open letter to Sen. Jerry Tillman, R- Randolph County and the Majority Whip in the NC State Senate. This letter concerns his amendment to House Bill 334 to remove oversight of charter schools from DPI and his primary sponsorship of Senate Bill 456, a bill to forward more public money to charter schools.
Sen. Tillman,
Your crusade to create a lucrative charter school industry at the hands of public schools again has reached new heights of irrationality and hubris, and it is indicative of an exclusionary attitude when it comes to serving the people of North Carolina.
I am not surprised that you as a leader of the GOP caucus in the North Carolina General Assembly would spearhead a campaign to keep privatizing education in North Carolina, but the fact that you are a retired public school educator pushing this agenda makes me think that your commitment to provide a quality education to all of our state’s children simply vanished when you took an “oath” as a politician.
As reported on July 23rd in Lindsay Wagner’s news story entitled “Tillman’s bill impacts charter school oversight”, you championed an amendment to House Bill 334 that now places oversight of charter schools under the care of the State Board of Education and out of the Department of Public Instruction’s jurisdiction.
What this does is essentially place the responsibility of monitoring charter schools into the hands of an entity that is not prepared for that task. When pressed on the matter, you expressed that you intended to allocate funds to allow the SBE to hire personnel to monitor charter schools. Really? Spend more money on charters by creating a situation where you can protect them from checks and balances? This sounds more like a way for you to fashion a favorable situation for new charter schools to not only operate more freely, but be less transparent.
Ms. Wagner also detailed the abrupt manner in which you fielded questions from other legislators who were concerned with the surreptitious manner in which you operated. You stated that “DPI was never in love … with charter schools.” By whose standards is this true? Yours? Is it because DPI has been able to identify indiscretions with many charter schools that needed to be corrected?
When Sen. Josh Stein (D-Wake) confronted you for more clarification about why your amendment was actually beneficial to children of North Carolina, you hid behind a curtain of illogical clichés and glittering generalities. Sen. Stein asked in what ways DPI had inhibited charter school creation and you shot back, “I’m not going to give you the details. A good lawyer would never do that.” That’s odd. You are a lawmaker. You should produce details. In fact, good lawyers very much pay attention to details.
When further pressed to offer details as to why DPI should be divested of charter school oversight, you said, “We don’t air dirty laundry here.” Senator, if there is enough dirty laundry to create the need for your amendment, then you probably need to show everyone the stains. And where and when should this “dirty laundry” get aired? It seems like you were in the laundromat already.
You were in a meeting specifically to address House Bill 334 and you brought forth an amendment which totally changes the scope of how charter schools are managed and then you bullishly refused to explain yourself. If your reasoning is so sound, then why did you not clarify it? When people refuse to answer questions that require thoughtful answers, then it usually means that one is either hiding some secret agenda or really has no logical reasoning whatsoever, or both. I am thinking that it is both because this is just the last of a series of actions that have shown you bulldozing the public schools to create more charter schools without oversight.
A June 4th report by Laura Leslie for WRAL entitled “Senate Education Leader blasts charter chief” detailed your outburst in a meeting concerning why DPI refused to grant charters for many new charter school applications. Reading your comments makes you sound like a playground bully who did not get his way. The first few sentences of the report used phrases like “angry outburst” and “public dressing-down” to describe your tirade. Joel Medley, the State Office of Charter Schools director, actually explained to you the reasoning for the denial of some charters. He did not seem to hide behind some political agenda. He was willing to air dirty laundry for the sake of the state’s welfare. No lawyer needs to explain that.
Let’s go back a few weeks. I now refer to the April 28th edition of the Winston-Salem Journal, when education writer Arika Herron reported that you proposed a bill (SB 456) which “would send more money to charter schools” by taking more from traditional public schools in next year’s budget (“NC Senate bill would send more money to charter schools”). I have to admit; at least you are consistent.
It appears that you publicly ignore that charter schools can practice exclusion and in many cases divert public funds to unregulated entities. Charter schools are not required to offer transportation or provide free/reduced lunches. They can selectively limit enrollment and hire non-certified educators. Most charter schools simply lack transparency. And a further consequence is that SB 456 targets poorer people because you introduced a bill that would exclude more poor people (who still pay taxes) from the benefits of a quality education that you perceive only charter schools can give.
Sen. Tillman, you do not seem to care if your wish to expand charter schools actually widens the income gap that so much grips our state. You made that perfectly clear on Feb. 23rd, 2011, when you were shown on a video posted by Rob Schofield on the ncpolicywatch.org website. You fielded a question that expressed concern over whether lower-income kids could have equal chances to attend charter schools. Your response was indicative of the exclusionary attitude that your proposed bill embraces.
You said, “It’s certainly okay if they don’t go there [the charter school]. They can go to their public schools. They can get their free and reduced price lunch. And they can do that. But the charter school itself and the commission must decide what they can do and when they can do it financially. And that’s where we are now and that’s where we’re gonna’ be and I’m certainly for that.”
With a response like that, how can you claim to represent all North Carolinians? The fact is that no matter the socioeconomic background of the students, traditional schools do succeed when proper resources are allotted (money, textbooks, time, respect, etc.). When teachers have the support of the public AND the legislature, any school can show student growth. However, your statement leads one to think that you are promoting exclusivity based on income levels.
And this is not the first time that you have alienated those who suffer from poverty.
You were a primary sponsor for the Voting Reform Act in the 2013-2014 sessions, leading the charge to fight non-existent voter fraud in our state by fast-tracking a voter ID law that was purposefully constructed to keep many people’s voices from being heard, especially minority and low-income citizens. If these people are silenced, then how can they democratically affect outcomes in elections that may sanction positive change for their children and grandchildren including issues surrounding public education? You seem to be denying them the very right that you have sworn to protect and uphold as an elected official.
As a public school teacher, I am amazed that you continue to belittle the very public schools that you yourself once served as a teacher, coach, principal and assistant superintendent – for over 40 years! You are drawing a pension for being a public school retiree!
But now you are a seven-term state senator and a willing participant in transforming North Carolina from what was considered the most progressive state in the Southeast into what has regressed into a stagnated commonwealth ruled by reactionary policies.
And what seems most egregious is that you are the co-chairman of the Senate’s Education Committee. Your decisions impact ALL STUDENTS! You have a direct influence in how schools are funded, what they can teach, and how they are measured. Surely you remember the Jeb Bush inspired letter-grading system you helped implement that found most “failing” schools in North Carolina resided in areas where there were concentrated pockets of poverty.
As a public official you are under oath to uphold the state’s constitution which ensures all students a quality public education. Instead you are compromising all students in traditional schools while taking more of the valuable money and resources allocated for them to give to charter schools that do not have to abide by the same regulations.
If you truly want to positively impact public education, then invest more in pre-K programs and expand Medicaid so more kids come to school healthy and prepared. Reinstitute the Teaching Fellows program to keep our bright future teachers here in North Carolina. Then give decent raises to veteran teachers so they finish their careers here instead of in other states.
Real leaders take away obstacles that impede those who are served. You are creating more.
Stuart Egan, NBCT
West Forsyth High School
Clemmons, NC
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is important work: Calling out elected leaders who engaged in the deliberate demolition of public voice and public institutions. The agenda usually includes resegregating schools and profit-making as the new national norm, but with the political cover of charters, recovery or turnaroundschools/districts plus as much on-line learning as possible.
On the matter of easing the way for resegregated schooling, I just finished listening to a really worderful report on NPR radio. It is centered on the educational success of desegregated schools in the greater St. Louis area–first wave, and what has happened recently. The reporter/story teller has been covering education for over a decade. The multipart narrative ends with some absurd commentary from a “turnaround specialist” who is absolutely cluelees.
Highly recomend the whole program. Avoid gulilt by finding some mindless chores to do while you listen.
You can start here. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with
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If I may adjust your statement a little, Laura:
“This is important work: Calling out GAGA TEACHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS who engaged in the deliberate demolition of public voice and public institutions THROUGH IMPLEMENTING THE MANY EDUCATIONAL MALPRACTICES THAT THEY KNOW ARE WRONG AND HARMFUL TO STUDENTS.”
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Duane,
at what point, though, did GAGAing in a problematic way begin? Was it in the glory days of introducing National Boards? Does it just go back to NCLB? What’s the starting point for this type of action that you so often describe? (I see your point. . . but I don’t really know how to determine when following the leader in education became part of the problem). Because right now I see the ship taking water from both sides and the GAGA issue is more about the people who show up to help—-but what you are saying is they are causing leaks in the boat, so to speak. When did that start? (I agree that attention needs to be paid to both the General Assembly in NC taking a meat cleaver to our public schools AND any other force causing it ill. . .but again, I ask you. . .) when did these forces from within by GAGA begin hurting more than helping?
Any ideas?
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Hmmm, I hadn’t really thought about when this might have begun. I believe it to be more of a function of teachers, in general, being quite “conservative” in the sense of wanting to help those cultural constants that are good to continue, in essence being agents of cultural continuity. So that many are self selected by their “nature” to be one’s to follow what the “boss” says needs to be done, considering that usually the boss was older than teacher (not so much at all anymore for many teachers).
It seems to me fear driven laws such as NCLB serve to bring out/compound the issue of “following orders”. I noticed a change in administrative terminologies starting at the end of last century and the beginning of this one from valuing open, cooperative management to one of administrators having to be “strong leaders” and “get everyone on board”, with the implication if you weren’t on board you should be scuttled. That discourse tied into the demands of pseudo-accountability of NCLB came together to produce silence, acquiescence and subservience from the teachers in regards to all the various changes/educational malpractices that were being instituted. Administrators trained (notice I didn’t say educated) to “be strong leaders” and teachers in fear of their livelihoods have led to blossoming of this meat eating flower that is being GAGA and not standing up against educational malpractices that harm students.
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How many public schools are in Randolph County? Maybe this letter should go to the senator’s constituents along with an analysis of how each public school in his district has been harmed by his actions.
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I would love to see Senator Tillman’s response!
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Senator Tillman’s response:
Response?! I don’t need to give no stinkin response!!
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My guess is that Tillman, as you note, will not respond. I also think he doesn’t care, based on his actions up to this point, because he is a product of an era and has not grown beyond it.
When he taught and was an administrator, NC was still emerging from our old white, protestants (men) in charge of things. I assume he came up through that chain of command (as did I) and resides there in his mind and heart and so believes he is doing the right thing because that is who he probably imagines he represents.
Mr. Egan is spot on, but he is spot on for an audience who has grown and emerged to embrace the changes, developments and progress we have seen in our culture. Not everyone is there—not everyone likes the progress that we see around us. I imagine Senator Tillman is speaking for those folks.
Because they are scared of progress and change.
Remember the quote: “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
― T.S. Eliot
I suspect Senator Tillman would rather relate to wealthy white men than own the fact that he was a laborer. . .a teacher. . .the poor man’s profession. Rather than be a humble servant, he wants to hide in the shadow of yesterday.
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Thank you Stuart Egan. I’m proud to share our profession with an educator who can write so well and expose evil so effectively. I hope your letter is read widely by constituents who are as appalled as we are.
I’m reading The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration which tells the stories of some of the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who left the Jim Crow South. Reading this letter as my head is still filled with the horrors described in the book sends a chill down my spine. We’re re-segregating and it’s not just in the South.
Thank you, Diane for providing this ongoing conversation and encouraging us to fight back.
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Thank you Mr. Egan for putting it out there so well. I hope you sent your letter to all media outlets in the state.
I invite any member of the North Carolina Legislature to come spend a day with me in my Birkenstocks and see how well you do faced with the challenges that are no longer infrequent but chronic. Just kidding about the Birkenstocks – old librarian joke.
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Even more sad is the role of national government in aiding the autocratic regime who attempts to suppress the voices of teachers and unions in harm’s way.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32114-oaxaca-mexico-faces-police-militarization-as-governor-acts-to-preempt-education-protests
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In addition to letters, candidates and sitting legislators should be asked opinions in person and the conversations should be recorded and placed on social media.
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I totally agree with you. Yet when Thom Tillis unwittingly remarked on a hot microphone that they (the GA) were going to give teachers a taste of things to come (when their onslaught first started), it was all over the news. And NC elected him to the U.S. Senate and voted in a Republican majority in both houses of the GA. That was my first true realization that the attack was real and no one cared. Will they care when there are no public schools or actual certified teachers left in this state?? I am not sure they will. So disheartening…..
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Your clever wit made me laugh out loud and smile. Thank You. Always appreciate your clear view.
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To figure out how to combat such wrong sighted lawmaking, I think its helpful to to figure out the motivation for their seemingly ridiculous ideas..for instance, I think its obvious that the “Voter ID” laws, cynically sold as efforts to combat the non-problem of voter fraud, is simply an effort to suppress the votes of people who probably will not support your agenda. On Charter Schools, why is a career public educator such as Tillis, trying to starve public education of funds, and promote the limited access Charter programs? Why does a 74 year old retired educator so wrong-headedly think this is the best way forward? We goes out of the way NOT to explain his reasoning, so I’m baffled as to how to argue against his actions.
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One simply needs to follow the money trail, Gordon. TFA (via their political arm — LEE, ALEC, and other major pro-charter entities are pumping BIG money into NC elections. He simply sold out…just like the rest of the pack.
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Charter schools ARE public schools. They are designed to be laboratories where new ideas and different curriculums can be freely tried without all the bureaucratic hassle that exists in traditional public schools. They are designed to be a challenge that encourages improvement for all public students by allowing local citizens to compare student outcomes where both types of public schools exist in a community.
I was a traditional public school teacher as well as a private school teacher and administrator. Experience taught me that teacher certification was absolutely NOT a guarantee of excellence in instruction, nor was oversight by NCDPI always a good thing. Politics and lethargy of that bureaucracy often hampered rather than helped student outcomes, and many of the same ideas with new names cycled back around every few years.
Charters close if they do not produce good outcomes…it is part of the contract with the state. Sadly, traditional public schools in NC are not held to that higher standard. And parents, as it should be, get to vote to leave bad charters with their feet.
The charter school in our community is ranked by several national publications as one of the top 100 in the nation. That kind of opportunity never existed here before it was established…as a free public school available by lottery to all citizens. There are waiting lists every year to enroll for the lottery. That speaks volumes to me.
Public money following the student is fair. The money should go where the job gets done best, regardless of which public school it is. This discussion should be about how well educated students become…not in what type of school it happens.
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Pat,
Charter schools are not public schools, so they admit whenever they are hauled into court or before the NLRB because of refusing to follow state laws or even being indicted for embezzlement.
What notable innovation has been produced by charters in their 25 years of existence? Longer schooldays? Strict discipline? 60hour work weeks?
No unions? High teacher attrition? High student suspensions? These are the features of 19th century schools and workplaces.
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Charters close if they do not produce good outcomes? If charters have such higher standards and perform so much better, why would any of them EVER have to close?? More like they take the money and run, leaving their students displaced and leaving traditional public schools to take them in. And that public funding won’t “follow the students”. But I’m glad you brought up the closings, as it is one of several ways charter proponents skew the data. When they close, there is “no data”. So the bottom of the barrel doesn’t get reported, just as new charters don’t have data to report. They say charter schools perform well, but…. Selective admissions, weed out counseling, inordinate expulsions, no lunch, no transportation, no transparency.. Lots of clever ways to stack the deck, yet they still do not outperform traditional schools overall, and often fare worse. Smoke and mirrors, Pat. Higher standards?? In some charters, perhaps. But the rash of recent charters are money-making scams and some legislators in NC fell for it hook, line and sinker. The bait, of course, was a timely campaign contribution…..
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I’d like to suggest the groundwork for the current dire state of North Carolina’s public schools began with the introduction high stakes testing, in the early ’80’s. With the introduction of testing, came talk of “incentives,” which some wished, hoped, dreamed or hinted (nod, nod, wink, wink) might be monetary in nature. Everyone is aware of the history of salary structure for public school teachers. Here was the first suggestion of a meritocratic salary structure, based on “measurable criteria.” Briefly, the feeling was electric. Many teachers were giddy…with an oversimplified hope. Hard work = students who learned, therefore tested well = a merit based raise for the teacher. A capitalist business model with which we were familiar, to which we’d all been conditioned. Oh happy day!
Then the snake began devouring its own tail. The legislature held the purse strings, clearly the power. The testing industry, soliciting contracts, kowtowed to the legislature. Teachers became monkey in the middle, tantalized by the prospect of having some measure of control over their own financial fates, but forced to jump through various hoops, and shoot at continually moving targets, as the incredibly complex and manipulable game of high stakes testing became increasingly plastic and political. The unique and sacred trust of public education, though admittedly ragged and struggling, showed itself to “educational entrepreneurs” as a potential cash cow. Struggling schools + measurable criteria = entrepreneurial opportunity. That’s right, the Sacred Trust could be monetized! Not that it had not happened before, but that had been limited to the Big Business of textbooks. Not unrelated at all, but not particularly germane to this discussion.
Most unfortunately, the “entrepreneurial opportunity” consists in removing the “public” from public schools. Charter schools and their attendant privatization (non-union food prep, custodial services, non-state-certified staff, et.al.) clearly move well away from the notion of sacred public trust in which we’re all invested, to the sacrament of the bottom line, in which, ironically, we are still invested with our property taxes. Clearly, the idealistic notion upon which public schools were founded, that of educating citizens so they might engage in participatory democracy, has been co-opted. But then, that may not have tragic consequences in an oligarchy.
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