The legislature in North Carolina never tires of finding new ways to mess up their state’s once-greatly admired public schools.
By mandating class size reduction across the state without providing additional funds, districts will be required to send pink slips to thousands of teachers of music, arts, physical education, and teacher assistants.
“We’re not dealing with widgets. We’re dealing with people’s lives and their livelihoods,” says Katherine Joyce, executive director of the N.C. Association of School Administrators (NCASA), an organization that reps public school district leaders at the legislature.
The uncertainty puts at least 5,500 teaching jobs statewide in jeopardy as districts scramble to reallocate resources, according to the NCASA.
That doesn’t include teacher assistant positions, particularly crucial jobs in low-performing schools and districts jettisoned by the thousands in cash-starved districts since 2008. Without major legislative concessions in the coming weeks, K-12 leaders expect many more T.A. jobs will be on the chopping block this year.
One bipartisan-supported reprieve to the looming class size order, House Bill 13, gained unanimous approval in the state House in February, but despite advocates’ calls for urgent action this spring, the legislation has lingered in the Senate Rules Committee with little indication it will be taken up soon.
Sen. Bill Rabon, the influential eastern North Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, did not respond to Policy Watch interview requests, but his legislative assistant said this week that Rabon’s committee will not consider any House bills until the General Assembly’s April 27 crossover deadline….
Regardless, public school leaders say the state’s drive to reduce class sizes comes at a particularly arduous time for districts. With North Carolina teacher pay mired among the lowest in the nation, K-12 experts are reporting major teaching shortages and plummeting interest in teaching degrees in the UNC system.
The legislature, dominated by a super-majority of ultra-conservative Republicans in both houses, is doing its level best to harass teachers and drive students to charter schools and vouchers. Under the guise of “reform,” more teachers and programs will be cut.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“We’re not dealing with widgets” should be stamped on every legislators’ forehead the moment he or she appears on the floor to vote.
LikeLike
INSANE.
LikeLike
That is the plan. Create a demand for minimalist test-driven charter schools.
The media pitch will be about the generousity of the legislature in “cutting class sizes.”
The fact that there is no money to do this will be surpressed.
It is probable that cuts in so-called non-core, non-academic classes and electives will not cause an uproar.
Cutting competitive sports may be a different matter.
LikeLike
Narrow the curriculum, narrow the voice. Many marginalized children find outlet for social voice inside art, music, dance, etc. Taking these classes away from schools affects all kids, but wealthier kids have parents who may add these subjects to a kid’s after school hours — poorer kids simply lose one of the only outlets available to them for finding future employment and social expression.
LikeLike
If you wanted your children to have an enRICHed education you should have been born rich .
LikeLike
Like!
LikeLike
It dawned on me this morning that most dictatorships try to do away with the intelligentsia as fast as they can. One way that our government may be trying to do this is through the privatization movement which is not held accountable to standards and thus does not have to provide quality education which thus leads to a less well-educated citizenry and all in the name of providing choice in education. They may not be arresting us in our classrooms, but they’re doing everything else in extremely insidious ways to do away with us. Interesting.
LikeLike
When you want to control citizen dissent, you can “disappear” your teachers through bodily attack and death, or you can be more “civilized” and simply spend long years arguing that you care about kids while viciously and methodically disappearing respect for the profession of teaching.
LikeLike
“North Carolina’s Secret to Small Classes”
To make the classes small
You just lay off the staff
You don’t lay off them all
Just quarter to a half
LikeLike
Awhile ago, I wrote
“The Charter Secret to Small Classes”
To keep the classes small
You just suspend the chaff
You don’t suspend them all
Just quarter to a half
Recycled poetry!
LikeLike
I am a big fan of recycled poetry. I’m also a big fan of well placed commas. And, I’m a fan of, well, placed commas. I do not like recycled commas. Or recycled ideas. Upsizing and downsizing to churn and burn is a recycled idea. It’s getting old. Tired of it! The North Carolina Constitution calls education a “privilege”, and a buttress of “religious” and “moral” knowledge to promote “happiness”. Yesterday, here, one respected commenter dealt a weak, personal attack to another respected commenter, based on the placement of commas. For that, fun was made. The fact is, however, that regarding legal documents such as state constitutions, laws, and court decisions, word choice, grammar, and even punctuation matter. The Tar Heels have shown, yet again, that they don’t care about or understand the purpose of education. It’s in their Constitution. It’s, in, their, Constitution.
LikeLike
It was not a personal attack! It was an attempt to gain some understanding of what appears to be a weirdly Jekyll-and-Hyde-approach to punctuation. No way can you tell me that comma usage is not puzzling.
LikeLike
Q: How do you tell a recycled comma from one that is not recycled?
A: the recycled comma is green
LikeLike
Commas are puzzling, indeed! Especially the green ones. (Sentence fragment.) There are no hard and fast rules for commas. Commas, and the laws that govern them, bend. Scientists do not know why. As an English teacher, I often offer the following advice about language rules: take it easy. Fear not the English language; just write. And, when critiquing others’ writing, I try to take it easy. Standardization has drawbacks.
I’m glad no one is attacking anyone here. Our reforminess supporting, billion dollar wielding opponents are powerful enough without us climbing on each other’s backs. Love to have discussions and debates, not so much about writing styles, though. We’re cool, FLERP!
I do, though, like green commas and ham. I’ll ham it up on some charter school scam, but Coleman’s made commas an overwrought sham. Just hope keeps recycling one who says, DAM I AM. (There’s a palindrome waiting to be born.)
In summary, education is a right. Professional autonomy for teachers is a right. If “choice” is the desire, choose commas. Punctuation is a privilege, little funding required.
LikeLike
Yes. Thank goodness for civil discourse, here.
I taught “English” for 8 years after a lifetime of teaching elementary (primary school-age) kids to write what they thought. Anyone who teaches grammar in upper grades should begin by teaching the basics to kids who are just beginning to grasp that those sound can be translated onto paper.
My sons, in grade 7, had a grammar-nut whose entire course was a weekly chapter from Warrinner Grammar.
I had a 3 step process which I brought to the seventh grade, and it was so successful that within a year (and for the 8 years of my tenure there) my students (the entire 7th grade) were at the top of NYC tests, including the NEW ELA writing exam , where 3/4 of NYC failed.
The steps, which I introduced in the first week, along with offering models of great writing — stories and readings where authors obviously met the challenge, and my own weekly letters to them (which made me famous, BTW)
Step 1 GET THE IDEA… SOMETHING ONLY YOU CAN DO.
Step 2. GET IT DOWN…. just write. Forget grammar, forget anything that will impede your progress.
STEP 3 (the hard work) GET IT READY FOR A READER ( AN KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE!
We learned to edit. To cut unnecessary words, to add better words or phrases, to rearrange and put our best thoughts first, to introduce our themes, and include our summaries at the end where they belong.
We read to each other, and met in groups, and
I used some presentations from Warners, and I introduced the ‘rules’ because they were going to be in HIGH SCHOOL in 2 years, and had to realize there was a recognized form for sentences.
I also created a meme “COMMA AND” “COMMA BUT” “COMMA OR”
But the most successful advice that I gave, according to the students (now in their twenties, who found me on Facebook or Linked-in) was ROL>Read Out Loud!
I told them, that they must read our loud, everything that they write, and that they would hear the places which needed a pause or a stop, or where they were redundant.
Mostly, I would use the kid’s work, on an overhead projector,( with permission) and we would discuss the alternate ways to say things so they made sense, and more than that, where they added something special, some natural style or lyrical manner.
I remember intruding a french version of the LION AND THE MOUSE, where the lion, waiting beneath the bushes, spied the little mouse as it scurried about.
I introduced the gerund that day, and asked them to write some sentences using them
Instead of The cat sat on the table, or the man walked the dog… how about, “sitting on the table, the cat watched the fish swim round and round, and …” or Walking his dog, Bear, in the park, the man stumbled upon a secret tunnel, when Bear pulled him into the…”
I used Ray Bradbury’s The Fog Horn,” to introduce semi-colons and various punctuation, because that story has so many ways to stop the reader.
I used Guy De Maupassant’s “The Necklace,” not merely to introduce irony, but because he loved to use commas in a series, for words or phrases., “this, this, and this.”
MY kids learned to write, and their grammar was good enough so that they won almost every writing competition in NY…The Read, the Scholastic.. etc., and went to the top high schools, even the children who came in reading in the 19th percentile left with a “grasp of grammar.” (an alliteration and irony, and …)
I was in 1998, the NYS Educator of Excellence (NYSEC The NYS English Council award)
I was also, in a rubber room six months later, as they looked for ways to call me incompetent… and failed, so they dreamed up fabricated charges… and that is a story to long for here… as it is CHAPTER ONE, The War on Teachers!”
Who will write it. I am going into surgery in May, and won’t be able to do much.
LikeLike
Susan, would like to have been a fly on the wall during those classes. The course sounds wonderful!
LikeLike
WHY THANK YOU.
Actually, My school was a magnet school, and parents came on tours each week to see our classes. Many wouldn’t leave to go to the next classroom, ” i want to take your course,’ was a frequent comment. I was also the NYC cohort for the Pew Research ON The Principles of Learning
www.newvisions.org/page/-/Prelaunch%20files/PDFs/NV%20Publications/challengestandards.pdf
Principals and staff developers from the 12 districts in the study often sat in my room.
My practice was filmed by The LRDC (UNIv.of Pittsburgh learning, research & development) . A the end of the research, I was one of six teachers (20,000 studied) who met all the principles in a unique way. I wrote the curriculum from scratch. NO GATES, no common core.THAT IS WHY I HAD TO BE ERASED. MY VOICE WAS TOO POWERFUL.
I had a book offer form Stenhouse, to explain how I did it…. couldn’t have teachers explain how to enable LEARNING, when the conversation was about to be changed to evaluation those bad, tenured teachers. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Learning-not-Teacher-evalu-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-111001-956.html
I tell you this not to brag, but to demonstrate the enormous effort that was needed to put me in a rubber room. I feel sorry for teachers because there is no winning against these guys.
Click to access eic-oct_11.pdf
LikeLike
Recycled commas ,,,,,,
LikeLike
Well, if you ever decide to self-publish a flyleaf on that curriculum, I would buy it in a heartbeat.
I have often thought of doing something similar for the curriculum I have developed from scratch to teach for-lang (Span & Fr) enrichment to PreK/K over the last 16 yrs. it is a tenuous project, imagining that the equivalent of 15 hrs instruction/yr could give the age 2.5-6 cohort a leg up on learning to become L2-proficient by grade 12– or at least provide a kernel of audio/ accent/ beginner-phrases to sustain them thro primary-grades early-lang-learning budget drought, so that once they resume in ms, their prospects for proficiency are better than ours back in the day. A tiny market here in isolationist US, yet many parents interested in trying it at home.
LikeLike
The level of knowledge and expertise of the teachers in this country (exemplified by those who comment on this site) never ceases to amaze me.
That’s what bothers me most about politicians (from both parties) — people who know absolutely nothing about learning and teaching — telling teachers how to do their jobs, what standards to use, what tests to give and all the rest.
Instead of enforcing all their misguided policies on teachers, politicians should be acting as FACIlitators, facilitating things like curriculum and teaching methods exchanges.
The discussion of curriculum above reminded me of a comment by a math teacher who used to comment here regularly (Mathvale). He suggested that teachers have an “open standards” project modeled on the “open source” software projects like Linux. The standards would be written completely by teachers and other real education experts. (Imagine that!) Teachers could add to or change the standards to suit their own needs and no one would HAvE to use them if they did not want to.
Unfortunately, Common Core, test mania and all the rest drove Mathvale out of teaching, as has happened with countless others.
The way teachers have been treated by Republicans and Democrats alike is not only a travesty (to say nothing of revolting) but is also a huge waste of a resource with incalculable value.
Imagine if, rather than all the test and punish policies, Obama had instructed Arne Duncan to set up a “teaching and learning exchange” site on the web that facilitated exchange of ideas and resources for teachers throughout the country and offered help to struggling teachers from teaChing master’s.
What a difference that would have made — and would still make.
LikeLike
Well stated prose, SDP.
LikeLike
Thank you comma all period
LikeLike
Cross posted at Op Ed https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/School-officials-preparing-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Mass-Teacher-Firings_Public-Education_Reform_School-170413-559.html#comment654501
Who knows how they will replace the real teachers in North Carolina, but one thing is sure… the PLOY is to remove the voices that will reject BOGUS, learning curricula and outright propaganda from these guys who are looking got tell the future adult citizens of North Carolina, their version of history
Diane posted this a long time ago :North Carolina Plans to Adopt Koch-Funded Social Studies Curriculum
My comment at Oped has appeared her before:
For 2 decades,I have been writing about the war on the INSTITUTION of Public education. My most important essays can be found at my author’s page,
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html as I explain how a ‘magic elixir’ is so easily substituted for professional practice when it comes to LEARNING
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
NOTICE: I always talk about LEARNING not ‘teaching,’…that is ‘their conversation.!’ http://www.opednews.com/articles/Learning-not-Teacher-evalu-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-111001-956.html
Bamboozling the people with fake news was so easy, and to this day, is not recognized for the destruction it caused. http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
With 15,880 districts in 50 states, http://www.opednews.com/Series/15-880-Districts-in-50-Sta-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-140921-34.html still hidden is the plot to end our democracy (which depends on shared knowledge) http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/hirsch.pdfand at the same time the road to income equality, which the deep state knows depends on education for all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
It began in the late eighties with its major assaults against the experienced professionals, removing their voices, so the billionaires of the EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/eic-oct_11.pdfAlsohttp://https://dianeravitch.net/2015/10/24/the-educational-industrial-complex/ who own the media, could spread false news about ‘those bad, incompetent, tenured teachers.” it was a tsunami of abuse addressed at teachers.
Over one hundred thousand experienced, educated, dedicated and successful teachers (including me) met their doom and disappeared, as the school systems* collapsed; local systems which cared about the population were replaced as state legislatures took over the schools, with nary an educator on board.* and with them the VOICE of the professional who knows WLLL — my acronym for What Learning Looks Like.
The conversation was shifted from one about LEARNING, to one about teachers, and then with the foul NCLB act , the conversation became one about testing. Now we are in the end game, where our nations’ children are supposed to learn from machines.
LikeLike
“That doesn’t include teacher assistant positions, particularly crucial jobs in low-performing schools and districts jettisoned by the thousands in cash-starved districts since 2008”
We have teacher assistants because although I know we’re not technically “lower performing” according to Ohio’s incredibly complicated and ever-changing spreadsheet, we have a lot of lower income kids. They used to “track” kids in our school 25 years ago but that meant that all of the kids who needed more help ended up in the same class so now they do a more randomized placement and add assistants to classes who are likely to need them. It seems fairer, that they mix them up.
Is this something teachers like and find worthwhile, generally, assistants? Or would they rather have something else?
LikeLike
I hope some teachers respond to this, Chiara, I am curious too. My only experience w/teacher-assts was as parent to 2 kids w/IEP’s.
During the course of their ms/hs ed they had resource room most yrs, a few very-small ‘small self-contained’ classes for a couple of yrs, & every hs yr there were 1 or 2 ‘co-taught’ classes– mainstreaming/ inclusion, where a class of 25-30 containing 4 or 5 IEP students would have a roving SpEd asst-teacher to provide extra help. Resource room was mostly very helpful, & the self-contained classes were superlative.
But their experience w/large-ish classes incl teacher & teacher-aide was not good, & I often wondered whether the aide provided any benefit. There was a sort-of hubbub created by the simultaneous conferring w/teacher-asst, more a distraction than a help for kids w/ focus challenge. & having 2 teachers w/differing agendas caused frequent crossed signals & miscommunication. It struck me as a cheap way to deal w/inclusion, which clearly if it was going to work needed a smaller-than-usual class.
LikeLike
I was a special ed teacher and a teacher’s assistant in the special ed department. I was a TA when the school I was in started experimenting with sending special ed help into the mainstream classes. It was a little awkward at first since the mainstream teachers were not at all sure they wanted us there, but with time most of them found the extra pair of hands helpful. I did find “co-teaching” to be a joke especially since there was no common planning time, but over time I began to be in several mainstream classes in the course of a day with the teachers’ blessings. I really found it much more valuable to let the teacher teach, and I could support anyone who was confused or struggling. I was that other pair of eyes that could spot the student who was lost. I learned to ask the questions that were on the kids faces that they did not ask. I didn’t find us to be at cross purposes at all; we both recognized that each one of us had a unique role to play. When I had my students in resource, I was much better prepared to help them. With my help my special ed students could handle the general ed class and really gained confidence in their own ability. While I taught self contained classes for those who needed that smaller, safe environment, the aim was to move them into the mainstream when they were ready. By the time the almost fanatical push toward inclusion gained steam, I was teaching self-contained high school language arts/reading. There was no way my students could handle the general ed classes, so the issue of inclusion did not arise. That small class was critical to their being able to grow, and they did.
LikeLike
This might result in some modest increase in standardized test scores, but long term I think it will make college less viable for many more “at-risk” public school graduates. Receiving competitive scholarships and gaining admissions to competitive colleges usually involves presenting a portfolio of broader curricular exposure — art, music, student government, high school newspaper, yearbook staff, athletics, etc.
I don’t know how a student gets that exposure with limited funds and that kind of mandate. More highly educated families will probably send their kids to private school or find a situation in another state. Opportunity for social mobility will be reduced.
LikeLike
To left coast teacher… re Punctuation and grammar ant teaching th skill of writing.
Yes. Thank goodness for civil discourse, here.
I taught “English” for 8 years after a lifetime of teaching elementary (primary school-age) kids to write what they thought. Anyone who teaches grammar in upper grades should begin by teaching the basics to kids who are just beginning to grasp that those sound can be translated onto paper.
My sons, in grade 7, had a grammar-nut whose entire course was a weekly chapter from Warrinner Grammar.
I had a 3 step process which I brought to the seventh grade, and it was so successful that within a year (and for the 8 years of my tenure there) my students (the entire 7th grade) were at the top of NYC tests, including the NEW ELA writing exam , where 3/4 of NYC failed.
The steps, which I introduced in the first week, along with offering models of great writing — stories and readings where authors obviously met the challenge, and my own weekly letters to them (which made me famous, BTW)
Step 1 GET THE IDEA… SOMETHING ONLY YOU CAN DO.
Step 2. GET IT DOWN…. just write. Forget grammar, forget anything that will impede your progress.
STEP 3 (the hard work) GET IT READY FOR A READER ( AN KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE!
We learned to edit. To cut unnecessary words, to add better words or phrases, to rearrange and put our best thoughts first, to introduce our themes, and include our summaries at the end where they belong.
We read to each other, and met in groups, and
I used some presentations from Warners, and I introduced the ‘rules’ because they were going to be in HIGH SCHOOL in 2 years, and had to realize there was a recognized form for sentences.
I also created a meme “COMMA AND” “COMMA BUT” “COMMA OR”
But the most successful advice that I gave, according to the students (now in their twenties, who found me on Facebook or Linked-in) was ROL>Read Out Loud!
I told them, that they must read our loud, everything that they write, and that they would hear the places which needed a pause or a stop, or where they were redundant.
Mostly, I would use the kid’s work, on an overhead projector,( with permission) and we would discuss the alternate ways to say things so they made sense, and more than that, where they added something special, some natural style or lyrical manner.
I remember intruding a french version of the LION AND THE MOUSE, where the lion, waiting beneath the bushes, spied the little mouse as it scurried about.
I introduced the gerund that day, and asked them to write some sentences using them
Instead of The cat sat on the table, or the man walked the dog… how about, “sitting on the table, the cat watched the fish swim round and round, and …” or Walking his dog, Bear, in the park, the man stumbled upon a secret tunnel, when Bear pulled him into the…”
I used Ray Bradbury’s The Fog Horn,” to introduce semi-colons and various punctuation, because that story has so many ways to stop the reader.
I used Guy De Maupassant’s “The Necklace,” not merely to introduce irony, but because he loved to use commas in a series, for words or phrases., “this, this, and this.”
MY kids learned to write, and their grammar was good enough so that they won almost every writing competition in NY…The Read, the Scholastic.. etc., and went to the top high schools, even the children who came in reading in the 19th percentile left with a “grasp of grammar.” (an alliteration and irony, and …)
I was in 1998, the NYS Educator of Excellence (NYSEC The NYS English Council award)
I was also, in a rubber room six months later, as they looked for ways to call me incompetent… and failed, so they dreamed up fabricated charges… and that is a story to long for here… as it is CHAPTER ONE, The War on Teachers!”
Who will write it. I am going into surgery in May, and won’t be able to do much.
LikeLike
A thoroughly non-sensical proposal: a mandate for smaller class-size w/zero accompanying funds. I am not prone to conspiracy theory, but I do believe that when a public proposal is non-sensical, there must be another agenda afoot, & the usual suspect is kickbacks. Hence I agree w/all suggestions that this is yet another NC legislature scheme to hobble pubschs & drive families to private alternatives. Kickbacks provided by, one assumes, ALEC, Koch Bros, & the usual coterie of charter-boosters.
LikeLike