Which state legislature is working hardest to destroy public education and reduce the status of the teaching profession?

Unless you can make a better case, the winner is North Carolina.

The state legislature was swept by Rightwing extremists in 2010, and they promptly gerrymandered the state to protect their supermajority. Even when the public elected a Democratic governor in 2016, the legislature set about stripping the governor of his powers. Recently, the Supreme Court of the United Dtates rejected the state’s gerrymandered districts, clearly intended to disenfranchise black voters.

Now the legislature is back to attacking the teaching profession, in hopes of making it extinct in the state.

NBCT high school teacher Stuart Egan reports:

“The powers that rule in the North Carolina General Assembly have been waging a war against public schools in our state for the last four years. Under the guise of “reform,” GOP conservatives driven by ALEC-crafted policies have successfully enabled and instituted privatization efforts in many forms: unregulated charter school development, expansive growth of unproven vouchers, underfunding traditional public schools, and even propped an educational neophyte as state superintendent who has passively allowed the very department that is set to protect public schools to be heinously undercut.

“However, the latest move against public schools in North Carolina might signal the next step in overhauling education in the Old North State – the systematic elimination of the veteran teacher.

“Let me rephrase that.

“A gerrymandered lawmaking body has passed a budget that further indicates that many lawmakers in Raleigh will go to any length to poach the educational profession of veteran teachers.

“In the last four years, new teachers entering the profession in North Carolina have seen the removal of graduate degree pay bumps and due-process rights. While the “average” salary increases have been most friendly to newer teachers, those pay “increases” do plateau at about Year 15 in a teacher’s career. Afterwards, nothing really happens. Teachers in that position may have to make career-ending decisions.

“Without promise of much pay increase and no graduate degree pay bumps, those teachers may have to leave a profession they not only excel in and love, but serve as models for younger teachers to ensure professional integrity, the kind that was allowed to shine in a North Carolina of yesteryear when Republican governors and lawmakers were in the forefront of making sure public schools were a strength. And those teachers will not have due-process rights that would allow them to speak up about issues like compensation for fear of reprisal.

“Student will suffer; communities will suffer.

“The taking away of retiree state health benefits for teachers hired after January of 2021 is a step to create a system where students are more or less taught by contractors because the endangered species known as the “veteran teacher” will come to the point of extinction.”