Lindsay Wagner has been covering education issues in North Carolina for several years. Now that the state has vouchers, politicians say that parents will surely make the right choices. But since voucher schools are exempt from providing the same information as public schools, how can parents make informed choices?
Archives for category: North Carolina
Jeff Bryant lives in North Carolina and is a close observer of the recent political coup. Before the new governor, Roy Cooper, took office, the legislature rushed through bills to reduce his power and his appointments. Not content to have gerrymandered the state to put themselves in a supermajority in both houses of the General Assembly, they acted swiftly, without hearings, to diminish the role of the governor.
Bryant contends that education is at the heart of the coup, as it has long been in North Carolina. He interviews a historian of the state who explains the efforts by racist whites to disenfranchise blacks. Literacy tests were key to maintaining control of state government. When it turned out that large numbers of whites were illiterate, that gave impetus to improving white schools.
It is especially sad to see North Carolina on the path of racism, reaction, and hostility to public education, because it was once recognized as the most progressive state in the South.
A judge in North Carolina put a temporary hold on one of the legislature’s last-minute efforts to strip power away from the governor’s office, since the new governor will be a Democrat and the legislature has a super-majority of Republicans.
The judge needs more time to determine whether the General Assembly’s assault on democracy is unconstitutional.
This is one of the most important–and frightening–articles I have read in a long while. If you care about the future of our democracy, I urge you to read it.
It is about the takeover of North Carolina by the Tea Party, their tactics, their voter suppression aimed at black voters, and their cynical manipulation of anti-gay sentiment. The article doesn’t mention the enactment of school privatization laws, which have been a central plank in the putsch. But it is a cautionary tale.
In North Carolina, Some Democrats See Their Grim Future – POLITICO
https://apple.news/ASZaPmPZ4T-Cz6sPNG5kncg
Election expert Andrew Reynolds has traveled the world designing and evaluating political systems for their faithfulness to democratic principles. He is a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina. Based on international standards, North Carolina is no longer a democracy. He ranks it alongside non-democratic nations like Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.
He writes:
“That North Carolina can no longer call its elections democratic is shocking enough, but our democratic decline goes beyond what happens at election time. The most respected measures of democracy — Freedom House, POLITY and the Varieties of Democracy project — all assess the degree to which the exercise of power depends on the will of the people: That is, governance is not arbitrary, it follows established rules and is based on popular legitimacy.
“The extent to which North Carolina now breaches these principles means our state government can no longer be classified as a full democracy.
“First, legislative power does not depend on the votes of the people. One party wins just half the votes but 100 percent of the power. The GOP has a huge legislative majority giving it absolute veto-proof control with that tiny advantage in the popular vote. The other party wins just a handful of votes less and 0 percent of the legislative power. This is above and beyond the way in which state legislators are detached from democratic accountability as a result of the rigged district boundaries. They are beholden to their party bosses, not the voters. Seventy-six of the 170 (45 percent) incumbent state legislators were not even opposed by the other party in the general election.
“Second, democracies do not limit their citizens’ rights on the basis of their born identities. However, this is exactly what the North Carolina legislature did through House Bill 2 (there are an estimated 38,000 transgender Tar Heels), targeted attempts to reduce African-American and Latino access to the vote and pernicious laws to constrain the ability of women to act as autonomous citizens.
“Third, government in North Carolina has become arbitrary and detached from popular will. When, in response to losing the governorship, one party uses its legislative dominance to take away significant executive power, it is a direct attack upon the separation of powers that defines American democracy. When a wounded legislative leadership, and a lame-duck executive, force through draconian changes with no time for robust review and debate it leaves Carolina no better than the authoritarian regimes we look down upon.”
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article122593759.html#storylink=cpy
The Republican chair of the North Carolina State Board of Education said that the legislature’s act to hand its powers over to the newly elected state superintendent was probably unconstitutional. The state board is deciding whether to sue. Apparently some conservatives were angry because the state board turned down some charter applications. But the state board chair Bill Corey said they were just doing their job and protecting public money.
The decision to strip the state board of most of its powers was a quickie proposal, enacted without deliberations or hearings, as part of the Republicans’ strategy of taking away the powers of the newly elected Democratic governor.
“I don’t want to pass judgment on the governor,” said Cobey, a Republican appointee of McCrory. “But it’s still unconstitutional in my opinion.”
Cobey is one of at least two Republican appointees on the state’s leading public school board to take issue with the GOP-led House Bill 17, which not only impacts Cooper but wrests powers from the State Board of Education and hands them over to incoming N.C. Superintendent of Public Instruction Mark Johnson.
The sweeping legislation was filed and speedily approved with little public vetting in a surprise special session of the legislature last week, called shortly after lawmakers wrapped work on a hurricane relief bill.
– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2016/12/19/governor-signs-controversial-bill-state-board-education-chair-condemns-new-law-unconstitutional/#sthash.lJPP1vlx.q3uT8oyu.dpuf
Meanwhile, the new superintendent of the state’s schools, a 33-year-old lawyer who had two years in the classroom as a TFA recruit, said he supported the controversial bill that gave him many of the powers of the state board, including the power to approve new charters and control of the new “achievement school district,” modeled on the one that failed in Tennessee.
The state board plans to meet again to review its options.
June Atkinson, the incumbent Superintendent of Instruction for the state of North Carolina, was beaten by 33-year-old Mark Johnson on November 8. She was surprised by the outcome. Johnson won 50.8% of the vote; of 4.4 million votes cast, Johnson’s margin of victory was 58,000 votes.
Atkinson had worked for the Department of Public Instruction for 40 years, the last 11 as state chief.
Atkinson is the longest-serving state superintendent in the nation and the first woman in North Carolina to hold the job. She lost to Republican Mark Johnson, the second-youngest statewide elected official in the country. Johnson is a lawyer and school board member in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. He received 50.6 percent of the vote in the Nov. 8 election.
During an interview at her office last week, Atkinson shifted between moments of sadness, sometimes crying as she spoke about leaving the job she loves, and moments of frustration as she recalled comments Johnson made during the election, some of which she thought were unfair.
“I have two pet peeves. One is it bothers me when people swim in the swamp of ignorance or swim in the swamp of dishonesty,” Atkinson said. “It bothers me that my opponent would say disparaging things about people here in the department, that they are incompetent, that there are a bunch of bureaucrats here who don’t work well. I don’t take that personally because I know what it’s like to run for office. It’s the first time, however, I’ve run for office when I felt as if my opponent was dishonest in what he said.”
The two have not spoken about the election outcome, Atkinson said, and she doesn’t know what she’ll say when the time comes. She promises a smooth transition when Johnson takes over in January, but it’s clear the transition will be tough.
“It’s really hard for me to figure out what I want to say to him, because I don’t know where to start. I mean, he has taught two years. He’s never run an organization that has almost 900 people. He has never traveled to the 100 counties. He doesn’t have a background,” she said. “So, it’s like, how do I teach or how do I help a person who is an infant in public education to become an adult overnight to be able to help public education in this state?”
When asked about Atkinson’s remarks, Johnson responded:
“I acknowledge that (Atkinson) has been at the Department of Public Instruction for 40 years, and she has a lot of institutional knowledge,” he said. “I look forward to talking to her and hearing what she has to say about running the department and taking that into consideration as I go forward.”
Still, he said, Atkinson should not discount his experience as a teacher, local school board member and lawyer.
Johnson was a TFA teacher for two years, and a local school board member for less than two years, which should position him well to take charge of the schools of the state of North Carolina.
Read more at http://www.wral.com/ousted-nc-superintendent-on-successor-how-do-i-help-an-infant-in-public-education-/16236296/#2E8eABKf7wCRS4sO.99
Stuart Egan is a National Board Certified Teacher in North Carolina. The state legislature (the General Assembly) just passed legislation removing educational authority from the state board of education and handing it to the just-elected state superintendent of education, who is a Republican with only two years of teaching as a member of Teach for America.
Egan wrote to Mark Johnson, the 33-year-old neophyte who is suddenly in charge of the state’s schools.
The young man who will control the state school system ran against “the status quo,” which was imposed by the legislature that just put him in charge. Will he tangle with the legislature? Will he fight for teachers? Will he roll back over-testing, as he promised?
If you have …, “taken issue with what (you) sees as a lack of support for teachers and schools coming from the department and a failure to respond quickly to such issues as the state’s academic standards and over-testing” will you really seek to empower or enable those very teachers and schools the way that people in the GOP controlled NCGA special session just empowered you before you even step foot inside of your new office?
When the chair and vice-chair of the GOP controlled State Board of Education say that the General Assembly overstepped its boundaries in granting you as the incoming state superintendent this much power, then that sends more than one red flag into the air.
When two former governors, one of whom is Republican Jim Martin, says the special session has gone too far with bills such as the one which enables you, then sirens are screaming.
When the John Locke Foundation says that the power grab that involves the role of your office has gone too far, then many are saying that part of hell is freezing over.
So, what will you do now that you will have much to say about charter schools and the Achievement School District, the management of monies for public schools, and who is hired in DPI as well as some who may sit on the State Board of Education?
Because if someone who was as experienced as your predecessor was as handcuffed as she and was still able to wage battle against the very forces that have actually controlled the very “status-quo” you seem to have run against, will you be willing to battle those very people for the sake of the students and schools now that they have politically enabled you?
Or will you bend to the wishes of those who have placed this power within your office through a politically motivated special session that was undertaken solely as a coup against the fact that a democrat won the governor’s election?
I eagerly await your answer through your actions in the coming years.
As threatened, the Republican-dominated Geral Assembly of North Carolina passed legislation to diminish the powers of the incoming Democratic Governor.
The outgoing Governor, Pat McCrory, who lost the election to Attorney General Roy Cooper, promptly signed the controversial bills, undermining his successor.
The Tea Party Republicans who control the legislature are punishing Cooper for winning. They are a disgrace to a great state. They have betrayed democracy and abandoned any sense of fairness.
This is the work of North Carolina zillionaire Art Pope, who spent years defeating moderate Republicans and replacing them with extremists. Jane Mayer wrote about Pope in the New Yorker in 2011. Her article was entitled “State for Sale.”
As the North Carolina General Assembly passes legislation to limit the powers of the newly-elected Governor of the state, who is a Democrat, protestors gather at the State Capitol, speak out and are arrested.
The General Assembly has been controlled by Tea Party extremists since 2010, when they had the chance to redistrict and guarantee themselves a super-majority. The federal court has ruled that the redistricting was unconstitutional and ordered the legislature to redistrict again. Note to fox: Please stay away from the hens.
One of the new laws transfers power over the schools from the State Board of Education to the newly elected Republican superintendent of schools. Mark Johnson is a 32-year-old former Teach for America teacher, who taught for two years, then was elected to a local school board. A year after he was elected to the local school board, he announced his candidacy for state superintendent. Based on his scant experience, the Tea Party wants him to take charge of public education in the state. Michael Bloomberg and TFA’s political advocacy group LEE (Leaders for Educational Excellence) funded his campaign. Count this as another victory for TFA’s ambition to take over public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 