Archives for category: North Carolina
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

North Carolina: How TFA Alums Feather Their Own Nests

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2015 //
27

Lindsay Wagner of NC Policy Watch reports that a Teach for America alum in the legislature is pushing legislation that would clear the way for more charter schools staffed by TFA.

She writes:

“Rep. Rob Bryan (R-Mecklenburg) is pushing a bill that would pull five of the state’s lowest-performing elementary schools out of their local school districts and put them into a state-controlled ‘achievement school district.’

“This new achievement district would be able to fire all teachers and staff and enter into five year contracts with private charter school management companies to handle the schools’ operations..

“Asked whether or not the proposed legislation would include standards for hiring high quality teachers to teach in the ASD schools, Bryan said the charters can be trusted to hire good teachers.

“Bryan also highlighted research that indicates Teach for America corps members have good outcomes in low-performing schools, suggesting that those teachers could make for a good hiring choice in the ASD schools, despite their poor track record of staying in the classroom beyond a few years.

“[TFA teachers] don’t stay,” acknowledged Bryan, a TFA alum himself. “But you would be better served to have a TFA teacher every two years all the way through. Your results, based on the existing data—that would be better for you.”

– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2015/07/16/charter-school-operators-could-takeover-struggling-schools-replace-teachers-and-staff/#sthash.g3xtHYZw.dpuf

Rep. Rob Bryan (R-Mecklenburg) is pushing a bill that would pull five of the state’s lowest-performing elementary schools out of their local school districts and put them into a state-controlled ‘achievement school district.’

This new achievement district would be able to fire all teachers and staff and enter into five year contracts with private charter school management companies to handle the schools’ operations.

– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2015/07/16/charter-school-operators-could-takeover-struggling-schools-replace-teachers-and-staff/#sthash.g3xtHYZw.dpuf

Categories North Carolina, Teach for America

Will North Carolina Adopt Tennessee’s Failing Charter District?

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2015 //
21

Lindsay Wagner of NC Policy Watch asks whether North Carolina will be next to copy Tennessee’s floundering “Achievement School District.”

 

The idea is that the state will take over low-scoring schools, put them into a special district, and hand them over to private charter operators. All teachers will have to reapply for their jobs.

 

The ASD has encountered community opposition in Tennessee. Teachers leave, parents leave, enrollment declines, and there is no turnaround.

 

“Tennessee established an Achievement School District (ASD) five years ago in an effort to turn around failing schools, targeting schools primarily located in Memphis and Nashville.

 

How it works: the state identifies its bottom five percent of schools based on their students’ performance on standardized tests and marks them ‘priority schools,’ placing them within the state-controlled Achievement School District with the goal of lifting them up into the state’s top 25 percent within five years.

 

In most cases, however, the state doesn’t run the priority schools—instead, Tennessee contracts out their management to private charter school operators.

 

“It’s been so disruptive to the community,” parent advocate Lyn Hoyt, who is founder and president of TREE, Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence, a group dedicated to fighting for strong and equitable public schools, told N.C. Policy Watch.

 

“Schools in the ASD have a very hard time getting community buy-in,” said Hoyt. “A charter management company comes in and takes over a school, forces the teachers and staff to reapply for their jobs, and there is just no choice in the matter. The school has to take on a whole new persona under new management.”

 

Hoyt says that because the charter takeovers tend to be very sudden, parents become angry that their beloved neighborhood schools, which often serve as cornerstones of Memphis communities, become quickly transformed into unknown entities. Teachers hoping to hold on to their tenure rights tend to leave for more stable work environments if they can find them, and parents who have the means tend to pull their kids from the ASD charter schools in search of alternative options, leaving even larger concentrations of low-income, at-risk youth in the ASD schools.

 

Since the creation of the achievement school district, four charter operators have pulled out of Memphis—at least two because they saw troubling enrollment decreases, said Hoyt.”

 

The ASD has achieved nothing of consequence. By any objective measure, it has been a failure. Why should North Carolina copy Tennessee’s failed ASD?

 

– See more at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2015/07/15/is-north-carolina-next-in-line-for-new-orleans-style-takeovers-of-failing-schools/#sthash.Ej3hTPqw.dpuf

Categories Charter Schools, North Carolina, Tennessee, Turnaround Schools

The Rev. William Barber: A Civil Rights Leader for Our Time

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2015 //
12

The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is a major national figure in the civil rights movement of our time. He will be the keynote speaker at the Network for Public Education’s annual conference on April 15-17 in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Rev. Barber is the founder of the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina, where a radical faction has taken control of the Legislature and the Governor’s seat. The Moral Mondays convenes every Monday in front of the State Capitol to protest the legislsture’s assaults on basic human rights.

Please come to Raleigh to meet Rev. Barber and hear his eloquent plea for justice and decency in our time.

Here is a statement that Rev. Barber wrote about the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Rev. Barber writes:

Fix public education, end high stakes testing, pass ESEA

All lives of students matter. Children come into life with fresh eyes, fresh minds, and boundless hope and energy. Our elders created schools, and taxed themselves to pay for well-educated, loving people to be teachers, to keep that hope, energy, and freshness alive through the first two decades of life. But every day we hear of kids being bullied, giving up, dropping out, losing hope. To stop this man-made flood from schools to prisons, we need an all-out, multi-dimensional effort.

I write today because all people of good will, all patriotic Americans, have a chance to do something now to begin repairing the striking poverty breach that is so plain. Congress is preparing to vote on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) on its 50th anniversary. What they decide now can change the course of federal aid to education for decades to come.

My father taught physics at the high school I attended in one of the poorest counties in North Carolina. My mother has worked in the same high school for more than 40 years. My five children worked their way through public schools in the poorest part of our state. One earned a PhD from Harvard in public health; one starts law school this fall; and two are working on their college degrees. My youngest son has several more years of public school ahead of him.

But my heart aches for their peers. Everywhere I go, I see children attending under-funded schools with over-worked teachers. The seeds of justice and love that we try to sow have a hard time taking root, when they land on hungry stomachs and hopeless hearts. Kids are born as hungry to learn as they are to eat. All of them need learning environments that help them thrive and live purposeful, prosperous lives. Educational opportunities and qualified, caring teachers make this dream possible. But as we under-resource our public schools, we are not just deferring dreams, we are shriveling and stomping on them.

The Southern Education Foundation (SEF) has tried to alert the nation for years about the crisis in our schools. Their 2013 report makes the problem plain. SEF Vice President Steve Suitts said, “Without improving the educational support that the nation provides its low income students – students with the largest needs and usually with the least support — the trends of the last decade will be prologue for a nation not at risk, but a nation in decline…”

In our Moral Monday Movement in North Carolina, we believe we must engage in every non-violent means of struggle possible to stop the tea party extremist attack on our teachers, our schools, and our children. If we sit back and watch extremists destroy our University and public school systems, we are discredited before our children, and we forfeit our chance to be called ‘repairers of the breach.’

When Congress enacted the ESEA in 1965, everyone knew education opportunities for black children were radically unequal to the opportunities for white students. Now, 50 years later, these gaps persist and are widening–despite the law’s promise to level the playing field for the nation’s most vulnerable students.

The last time Congress reauthorized ESEA, they and President George W. Bush established high-stakes testing, labeling, and policies that punish schools if kids flunked the tests. Tests don’t teach. Nurturing creative adults who know how to draw out individual children are what education is about. We don’t send our kids to school to become skilled test takers. We pay our taxes and send our kids to public schools because we need future corporate CEOs, cardiologists and aerodynamic engineers, university presidents and school principals, urban planners and architects. Our sons and daughters can’t reach these heights when accountability in our education system hinges on standardized test scores, not cultivating intellectual opportunity—the real measure of education. Standardized tests can tell us only so much. Educators know that annual multi-dimensional assessments that tell us whether a child is falling behind, whether she or he needs intervention and support the school can’t provide, or if a youngster is on track to graduate are the tools they need—not a single number.

Congress has a chance to fix the high stakes testing regime that has failed. Congress has the chance to deliver on its promise of educational opportunities for all students, especially the nation’s most vulnerable ones, which is the purpose of ESEA. Congress has the chance to repair the breach caused by sins and systems of slavery and segregation.

All our children have a fundamental civil right to a quality education. The ESEA can help make schools of hope and love. Stop drying up our kids’ dreams, like raisins in the sun.

Barber is the current president of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the National NAACP chair of the Legislative Political Action Committee, and founder of Moral Mondays.

Categories Civil Rights, Network for Public Education, North Carolina, Privatization

North Carolina: Mass Layoffs of Teacher Assistants Reveal Legislature’s Indifference to Children

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2015 //
9

Stuart Egan, a high school teacher and public school parent in North Carolina, wrote the following letter in response to the legislature’s mass layoff of thousands of teaching assistants in the state’s elementary schools:

 

When public education has to defend itself against the state’s General Assembly in order to function effectively, those in government should reassess their priorities as elected officials.

Take for instance the political cartoon published in the Winston-Salem Journal on July 9, 2015 which parodies the iconic advertisement for the movie Jaws. It brilliantly depicts the NC Legislature as the man-eating great white shark lurking in the waters ready to devour public education. John Cole, the artist from ncpolicywatch.com makes reference to the battle over charter schools, vouchers, veteran teacher pay, retirement benefit cuts, and the latest development in the assault on public schools: the elimination of teacher assistant jobs.

 

Arika Herron’s front page news story in the same edition of the WSJ states, “By some estimates, the Senate cuts could mean as many as 8,500 fewer teacher assistants in elementary classrooms” in the state of North Carolina. When study after study published by leading education scholars (Ravitch, Kozol, etc.) preach that reaching students early in their academic lives is most crucial for success in high school and life, our General Assembly is actually promoting the largest layoff in state history.

 

As a voter, I am disappointed that the last three years with this GOP-led NCGA has fostered a calculated attack against public schools with more power and money given to entities to privatize education. By eliminating teacher assistants, the NCGA would simply weaken the effectiveness of elementary schools further and help substantiate the need to divert my tax money to segregate educational opportunities even more.

 

As a teacher, I am disheartened that my fellow educators are being devalued. Yes, teacher assistants are professional educators complete with training and a passion to teach students. With the onslaught of state testing, curriculum changes, and political focus on student achievement, these people fight on the front lines and advocate for your children and your neighbors’ children.

 

But as a parent, I am most incensed by this move to eliminate teacher assistants because my own child has tremendously benefited from the work of teacher assistants. Even as I write these words, my seven-year-old red-headed, blue-eyed son, who happens to have Down Syndrome, walks through the house articulating his thoughts, communicating his needs, and sharing his love to explore. And I give much of that credit to those who teach him in school: his teachers and their assistants.

 

When my wife and I explored educational pathways for our son two years ago, we talked to both public and private schools about how they could serve our child. Interestingly enough, we were informed that really the only option we had was public schooling; most private schools will not take a child with Down Syndrome. Simply put, they were “not prepared” to teach him. But his current public school not only welcomed him, they nurtured him and valued him. And it is because of the people – the teachers and the teacher assistants.

 

The rationale for eliminating teacher assistant positions actually reveals the disconnect that our elected officials have with public education. Last month in the Greensboro News and Record, Sen. Tom Apodaca said, ““We always believe that having a classroom teacher in a classroom is the most important thing we can do. Reducing class sizes, we feel, will give us better results for the students.” The irony in this statement is not only obvious; it is glaring.

 

That’s what teaching assistants already do. They mitigate class size by increasing the opportunities for student interaction. More prepared people in a classroom gives more students like my son the opportunity to learn. Sen. Apodaca suggests that having two classrooms of 25 students with a teacher and an assistant is weaker than having two classes of 22 students with just a classroom teacher. That’s not logical.

 

Oddly enough, Sen. Apodaca and his constituents should already know the value of assistants. He himself has three on staff according to the current telephone directory of the General Assembly. Sen. Phil Berger has fifteen staff members, three with “Assistant” in their title and five with “Advisor”. Maybe dismissing some of these “assistants” would offer some perspective.

 

Public schools are strongest when the focus is on human investment. People committed to teaching, especially experienced professionals, are the glue that holds education together. Eliminating jobs so that some political agenda can be fulfilled really is like forcing a bleeding public school system to swim in shark infested waters.

 

And we already have had too many shark attacks in North Carolina.

Stuart Egan, NBCT
West Forsyth High School
And Parent

 

 

Categories Budget Cuts, North Carolina

North Carolina Teacher to General Assembly: “I Can No Longer Afford to Teach”

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2015 //
37

There is an unprecedented exodus of teachers from the schools of North Carolina. Pay has been stagnant for years, and the legislature keeps passing budget cuts. Nearly 1,000 teachers quit in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district. Local officials worry about replacing them.

 

The following letter expresses the anguish of teachers in North Carolina. Somehow I missed this letter when it first appeared in 2013. It went viral, and you will see why. The sad fact is that the situation has grown worse in North Carolina for teachers during the past two years. The legislature and Governor doesn’t think about holding on to experienced teachers. They don’t even care about investing in career teachers. They killed the successful North Carolina Teaching Fellows Program, which prepared new teachers over a five-year period in college and graduate school. They put millions into hiring the temps of Teach for America, who will stay for two or three years, then leave. Salaries in North Carolina are near the lowest in the nation. It is hard to remember that North Carolina was once considered the most progressive state in the South, known for its outstanding universities and K-12 education. I wonder how “reformers” feel about belittling teachers and driving experienced teachers out of their state or their profession.

 
Letter to the NC General Assembly: I Can No Longer Afford to Teach

 

July 25, 2013 <http://makingourway.net/2013/07/25/letter-to-the-nc-general-assembly-i-can-no-longer-afford-to-teach/&gt; by lrkf <http://makingourway.net/author/lrkf/&gt;
Dear members of the North Carolina General Assembly,

 

The language in this letter is blunt because the facts are not pretty. Teaching is my calling, a true vocation, a labor of love, but I can no longer afford to teach.

 

I moved to North Carolina to teach and to settle in to a place I love. My children were born here; we have no plans to leave. I reassured my family in Michigan, shocked at my paltry pay and health benefits, that North Carolina had an established 200 year history of placing a high value on public education and that things would turn around soon.

 

When I moved here and began teaching in 2007, $30,000 was a major drop from the $40,000 starting salaries being offered by districts all around me in metro Detroit, but it was fine for a young single woman sharing a house with roommates and paying off student loans. However, over six years later, $31,000 is wholly insufficient to support my family. So insufficient, in fact, that my children qualify for and use Medicaid as their medical insurance, and since there is simply no way to deduct $600 per month from my meager take-home pay in order to include my husband on my health plan, he has gone uninsured. We work opposite shifts to eliminate childcare costs.

 

The public discourse on public assistance is that it is a stop-gap, a safety net to keep people from falling until they can get back on their feet. But as I see no end in sight to the assault on teacher pay, I will do what I have to do to support my family financially. We never wanted or expected to live in luxury. We did, however, hope to be able to take our little girls out for an ice cream or not wonder where we will find the gas money to visit their grandparents. And so, even though I am a great teacher from a family of educators and public servants and never imagined myself doing anything else, I am desperately seeking a way out of the classroom, and nothing about education in North Carolina breaks my heart more.

 

I will make no apologies for saying that I am a great teacher. I run an innovative classroom where the subject matter is relevant and the standards are high. My teaching practice has resulted in consistently high evaluations from administrators, positive feedback from parents, and documented growth in students.

 

I realize that no one in Raleigh will care or feel the impact when this one teacher out of 80,000 leaves the classroom. I understand. However, my 160 students will feel the impact. And 160 the next year. And the next. My Professional Learning Community, teachers around the county with whom I collaborate, will be impacted, and their students as well. Young teachers become great when they are mentored by experienced, effective educators, and all their students are impacted as well. When quality teachers leave the classroom, the loss of mentors is yet another effect. This is how the quiet and exponential decline in education happens.

 

Higher teacher pay may be unpopular, and I am aware it is difficult to see the connection between teacher pay and a quality education for students, so I will try to make it clear. Paying me a salary on which I can live means I can stay in the classroom, and keeping me in the classroom means thousands of students over the next decade would get a quality education from me. It’s that simple.

 

While I appreciate that Governor McCrory is advocating for a 1% raise for teachers in the coming school year, it is simply not enough. For me, that is $380, which after years of pay freezes, does not cover the negative change in my health coverage and copays. It does not cover the change in the cost of a gallon of milk, a gallon of heating oil, or a unit of electricity. It is not enough. A sobering fact: even a 20% raise would fall short of bringing me up to the 2007 pay scale for my current step, and that is in 2007 dollars.

 

My students deserve a great, experienced teacher. As a professional with two degrees and four certifications, I deserve to make an honest living serving my community and this state.

 

Respectfully,

 

Lindsay Kosmala Furst

 

————————————–

I was very afraid to write this letter. People have strong feelings about several of the topics herein, these things tend to take on a life of their own in the internet age, and “going public” means, of course, that when I go back to school next month, I may have to face students who know these quite personal details of my life. While I would not be leaving teaching as a statement or protest of any kind (what I really want to do is teach), I realized that the silent turnover that would happen serves no purpose at all, and that I need to at least let someone know. I’m not sure what kind of reckless abandon overcame me when I went ahead and sent the letters to both the General Assembly and the Raleigh News & Observer <http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/07/22/3049030/teachers-say-lawmakers-are-forsaking.html&gt;, but I knew that once it was out, there was no getting it back.
I feel like I have come out of secrecy. My cards are on the table. This is the reality of being a young teacher in NC right now. We expect recent college grads to suck it up and deal with low pay for a year or two. We expect that at 30, however, young teachers may be starting families or wanting to buy houses. The fact is that those of us who began here in 2007 are only making a few hundred dollars per year more today than when we started, and our benefits have been slashed, negating even that small increase.

 

With a heavy heart, I have realized that if I want to remain in the classroom, I will have to leave the state. If I want to remain in this state, the place that I chose to be my home, I will have to leave the classroom. At the same time, this advocate of public education is left wondering what will be left for my children when they start school. I can’t express how deeply saddening it is to think that about my own field.

 

Since this was reported earlier this week, I have received many messages of encouragement. At least a dozen are from other mothers in my position, teaching full time with children on Medicaid and/or WIC, the nutrition assistance program for women, infants, and young children. They thanked me for telling their story as well. So many are afraid to stand up and speak. The public negativity directed at teachers right now is overwhelming, and it is no surprise that many do not want to enter the fray. I cannot blame them. But since I already have, I will do my best to represent them as well.

 

Thank you for your support.

 

———

Update 1: WOW! I am overwhelmed by the response I have received. Thank you, thank you. Your support is incredible. Thank you for sharing your own stories here, as well. I am reading every single one of them.

 

Let me say this: While I appreciate difference of opinion, I will not be approving abusive comments. If you see one that has slipped by, please let me know. Thank you.

———-

Update 2: You guys. Honestly, you bring tears to my eyes. I’m heartbroken to see so many of you feeling the same way. If you want to leave a comment, please scroll to the very bottom where it says “Leave a Reply.”

Categories North Carolina, Teachers

North Carolina: Senate Budget Eliminates Health Retirement Benefits for Future State Employees

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2015 //
58

North Carolina legislators do not like public employees. They sit around and dream up new ways to cut their salaries or benefits. Here is a new one. Maybe ALEC came up with this one.

“A few short lines in the 2015-17 Senate budget would eliminate state-paid health retirement benefits for teachers and state employees hired after January 1, 2016.

“This will negatively impact the state’s ability to recruit good, qualified folks,” said Richard Rogers, executive director of the North Carolina Retired Governmental Employees’ Association. “In the future, I don’t see folks sticking with state government for the long term or for a career.

“Current law provides teachers and state employees with a paid health insurance plan for the duration of retirement. It’s a graduated system, said Rogers, so employees must work a certain number of years in order to receive the maximum benefit of a fully-paid health insurance plan.”

– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2015/06/19/senate-budget-ends-health-retirement-benefits-for-future-teachers-and-state-employees/#sthash.aZ6YPPLr.dpuf

Categories North Carolina

BREAKING NEWS! NC Court of Appeals Overturns Law Repealing Tenure!

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2015 //
11

The North Carolina Court of Appeals overturned a law passed in 2013 that was intended to eliminate tenure. The court said the law was unconstitutional.

Sharon McCloskey of the Progressive Pulse in North Carolina writes:

The General Assembly’s 2013 repeal of the teacher tenure law amounted to an unconstitutional taking of contract and property rights as to those teachers who’d already attained that status, according to a Court of Appeals opinion released this morning.

Writing for the court, Judge Linda Stephens said:

[W]e cannot escape the conclusion that for the last four decades, the career status protections provided by section 115C- 325, the very title of which—“Principal and Teacher Employment Contracts”— purports to govern teachers’ employment contracts, have been a fundamental part of the bargain that Plaintiffs and thousands of other teachers across this State accepted when they decided to defer the pursuit of potentially more lucrative professions, as well as the opportunity to work in states that offer better financial compensation to members of their own profession, in order to accept employment in our public schools.
The ruling by the three-judge panel affirms Superior Court Judge Robert H. Hobgood’s decision handed down a little over a year ago.

Under North Carolina’s “Career Status Law,” teachers in their first four years were deemed “probationary” and employed year-to-year under annual contracts. At the end of the four-year period, they became eligible for career status, giving them rights to continuing contracts and due process protections from arbitrary or unjustified dismissals.

In summer 2013, lawmakers enacted a repeal of that law in an effort to rid the state of tenure by 2018, saying that it enabled bad teachers to stay in the system.

– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2015/06/02/just-in-court-of-appeals-says-repeal-of-nc-tenure-law-is-unconstitutional/#sthash.nkB65Sc2.sKSMHTmS.dpuf

Categories North Carolina, Teacher Tenure

UNC Board of Governors Eliminates 46 Degree Programs

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2015 //
42

The Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina eliminated 46 degree programs across the system, mainly in education. The Legislature earlier eliminated the highly successful NC Teaching Fellows while expanding Teach for America. Evidently, the Legislature and the university governors don’t want professionally trained teachers.

Here are the degree programs that were eliminated:

DISCONTINUED DEGREE PROGRAMS

Appalachian State University: Family and Consumer Sciences, Secondary Education; Technology Education; Mathematics, Education

Elizabeth City State University: Special Education, General Curriculum; Middle Grades Education; English, Secondary Education; Political Science

East Carolina University: French K-12; German K-12; Hispanic Studies Education; German; French; Public History; Special Education, Intellectual Disabilities; Vocational Education

Fayetteville State University: Art Education; Music Education; Biotechnology

North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University: Comprehensive Science Education; Physical Education North Carolina Central University: Theatre; Jazz

North Carolina State University: Africana Studies; Women’s and Gender Studies; Business and Marketing Education; Physiology

UNC-Charlotte: Child and Family Development; Special Education, Adapted Curriculum; English Education; Mathematics Education

UNC-Chapel Hill: Human Biology

UNC-Greensboro: Mathematics, Secondary Education (BA); Mathematics, Secondary Education (BS); Economics, Secondary Education; Biology, Secondary Education (BA); Biology, Secondary Education (BS); Composition; Latin Education; Biochemistry

UNC School of the Arts: Film Music Composition

UNC-Wilmington: Physical Education and Health; Music Performance

Western Carolina University: Health Information Administration Winston-Salem State University: Biotechnology; Elementary Education; Teaching English as a Second Language and Linguistics

Categories Higher Education, North Carolina

North Carolina: Legislators Plan to Give $1 Million to Rightwing Lobby

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2015 //
19

Oh, those wild and crazy legislators in North Carolina! What will they dream up next to promote privatization?

 

Here is the latest:

 

As Rob Schofield reports in “Progressive Pulse”:

 

“A lot of people are justifiably outraged at the House budget provision that gives $1 million (and delegates public duties) to the conservative school privatization lobby group, Parents for Educational Freedom of North Carolina (PEFNC). As Rep. Rick Glazier — who tried to amend the budget to shift the money to fund teacher assistants — said yesterday (as reported by Raleigh’s News & Observer):

 

“This is the first time that I believe in the history of the legislature that we’ve done what this is asking. We’re giving $1 million of taxpayers’ money to an entity to then choose the charter schools to fund. … It is not our job to take away public funds and give them to a private entity to make public decisions.”

 

– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2015/05/22/nc-house-gives-1-million-to-lobby-group-that-pays-e-d-more-than-governor-mccrory/#sthash.PkT2cAHO.dpuf

Categories Charter Schools, North Carolina, Privatization

North Carolina Charter Schools Grow More Segregated, Say Scholars

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2015 //
7

A new paper by scholars Helen F. Ladd, Charles T. Clotfelder, and John B. Holbein analyzes the charter school sector in North Carolina. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2593657

The group give a brief history of charter schools in the state, which were capped at 100 until Race to the Top encouraged the Legislature to remove the cap altogether. As they show, the original charter schools enrolled mainly black students. As the sector grew, however, especially in the recent period, the charter sector has been increasingly segregated by race. It now enrolls more white students than black students. The test scores of entering students are higher than in the past.

As the authors summarize:

Taken together, our findings imply that the charter schools in North Carolina are increasingly serving the interests of relatively able white students in racially imbalanced schools.

It is indeed an irony that a policy fostered by the Obama administration (Race to the Top) has encouraged the growth of segregation, which appears to be a predictable result of market-based education. The policies of Race to the Top in this respect reinforce the preferences of the far-right political forces that gained control of the North Carolina legislature and governorship in 2010.

Even more troublesome is the effect of charters on the public school systems of the state, which continue to enroll the overwhelming majority of students.

As of 2014, charter school students accounted for 3.6 percent of all public schools students in the state, with the percentage of K-8 students (4.2%) being twice that of 9th to 12th grade students (2.1%). Although the overall percentages are low, they are far higher in some of the urban districts—currently, charter school students account for 15.1% of all students in Durham, 4.7% in Winston-Salem, 6.1% in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, and 4.9% in Wake County Schools.

The authors write:

In this paper, we have said nothing about how the growth of charters in particular districts is likely to affect the ability of those districts to provide quality schooling to the children in the traditional public schools. That issue is currently an urgent concern in Durham County, for example, where the rapid growth of charters has not only increased racial segregation, but also has imposed significant financial burdens on the school district. One recent study found that the net cost to the Durham Public Schools could be as high as $2,000 per student enrolled in a charter school, although the precise amount differs based on the assumptions (Troutman, 2014). Major contributors to this burden are the fact that the charter schools serve far lower proportions of expensive-to-educate children than the traditional public schools and that the district cannot reduce its spending in line with the loss of students because of its fixed costs. In ongoing research we plan to investigate further the evolving financial and other implications of charter schools on districts’ traditional public schools.

Categories Charter Schools, North Carolina, Race to the Top, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »