Archives for category: North Carolina
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My Response to a Teacher in North Carolina: Please Don’t Give Up

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2014 //
68

I hope teachers will find the inner strength to stand up to the bullying by governors and legislators. If you can’t teach, find another job. But if you are a good teacher and you are devoted to making a difference in the lives of children, don’t give up. Stay and fight. Join grassroots groups. Join the Network for Public Education. In every state there are groups of parents and educators standing shoulder–to-shoulder against the cultural vandals now in charge in places like North Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin. We will prevail, because their goal of destroying public education and turning teaching into a job for temps is so wrong that it will eventually be repudiated by the voters. We must work to make that day come sooner.

Here is a note from a teacher in North Carolina about the poisoned atmosphere for teachers in a state determined to crush public education and professional teachers:

“What do I, a NC public school teacher, think? I think it’s time to relocate. I chose to settle in NC b/c of its strong support for public education, but that’s now a thing of the past. The state govt is hell-bent on destroying both the teaching profession and the public schools.

“As soon as I am able, I will join the exodus of good, experienced teachers to anywhere but here…”

I wonder if Teach for America can produce enough temps to replace the experienced teachers who are leaving North Carolina? Perhaps the legislature will use this opportunity to increase class size, flip classrooms, and encourage home schooling and virtual charters?

Don’t leave. Stay and fight.

Categories Corporate Reformers, North Carolina, Teachers and Teaching

Developer in NC Gets OK for Charter At Entrance to His Gated Community

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2014 //
40

North Carolina policymakers are putty in the hands of Art Pope, the zillionaire libertarian who funds the John Locke Institute and is also state budget director. Bill Moyers featured him in an exposé and Jane Mayer of the New Yorker wrote an article about his successful takeover of the state, in which he successfully defeated moderate Republicans with extremists to his liking.

The far-out anti-public sector Legislature is intent on advancing privatization. They work from the ALEC script, having passed a law that allows a charter-friendly state “advisory” board to override local school boards that might be so rash as to protect their local public schools.

This is context to explain how a developer who built a gated community got permission to open a charter school right outside the gates of his community. He wanted to build it inside the gates, but the advisory committee thought that might give the wrong impression. The developer, by the way, is an old friend of Vice President Joe Biden, whose brother Frank Biden is involved with a for-profit charter chain called Mavericks.

The developer and his board were turned down by the local school board, one of the worst funded districts in the state. The charter will take funds from the district. Nonetheless, the district was squashed by the state advisory committees, which welcomes more charters, regardless of the fiscal impact on the local public schools.

Unlike public schools, where 100% of teachers must be certified, charters need hire only 50% certified teachers. You can tell this is real “reform” because the standards for teachers are lower.

The charter will be run by a guy who ran another charter that was closed because of financial problems.

Really, folks, you can’t make this stuff up.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, North Carolina

Message to N.C. Teachers “We Hope You Die Young”

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2014 //
43

This teacher deconstructed the proposal to change compensation for teachers in North Carolina, which follows on last year’s full menu of legislation intended to reduce the pay, job security, and rights of teachers in that state.

Bear in mind that the specifics of the plan are evolving, but here goes, from Kafkateach:

“I originally started this blog as a coping mechanism to deal with the absurdity coming out of the Florida Legislature and its wacky implementation in the Miami Dade County school system. After six months in North Carolina, Florida is starting to seem like a bastion of sanity and teacher love. The latest ideas circulating at the North Carolina General Assembly regarding how to reform the teaching profession certainly makes one wonder what exactly is in the water supply in Raleigh? Is it some brain eating teacher-hating amoeba? Or perhaps some chemical contamination laced with teacher hate? Apparently last year’s legislation to end tenure, abolish pay for advanced degrees, and reward the top 25% of teachers with a $500 raise only if they give up tenure four years early was not insulting enough. The highlights of this year’s 60/30/10 plan include: paying teachers on a per pupil basis, establishing career tracks, forcing all teachers to reapply for their jobs, and the ultimate kick in the wazoo, mandatory retirement after 20 years of service.”

According to the author’s last clarification, all teachers will not be compelled to retire in 20 years.

Categories North Carolina, Teachers and Teaching

Lodge McCammon in 2011: Flipping the Classroom, Larger Class Size, Pay per Pupil

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2014 //
37

A reader pointed out that Lodge McCammon proposed his plan to change teacher compensation in North Carolina at least two years ago. McCammon is the author of the much-discussed 60-30-10 proposal. Actually, Lindsay Wagner cited this article in her report this morning. The article was written by McCammon, not taken out of context.

He wrote then:

“RALEIGH — Our nation is plagued by a failing system of education. While there appear to be endless solutions, few are yielding substantial results. I’m ready to make a statement: Educational problems may be solved with economic solutions! Pay our most efficient teachers per pupil and then allow them the option to increase class sizes and/or the number of classes they teach.

We want to recruit, maintain and empower the finest teachers in order to offer the best possible education to all students. So first, let’s get down to the basics: We need to pay great teachers more.

It’s not a radical idea, or even a new idea, though it seems impossible given the current economic limitations. I’m not advocating new funding in order to pay teachers more. I am instead suggesting a reallocation of funds to support the most effective teachers who are willing and able to serve more students.

Basic technologies have created significant advancements in classroom efficiencies. The 21st century classroom looks quite different than classrooms of the past. Therefore, it is now possible for a teacher who has adopted more efficient teaching practices to take on more students while offering high-quality, personalized instruction.

One of these newer practices is “flipping” the classroom. In a “flipped” classroom traditional lecture is removed from class and instead, the teacher uses video lectures that can be viewed by students at any time and as many times as needed. This frees up class time that can be used for collaboration, active learning and creative problem solving.”

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/12/26/1730586/how-new-teaching-merits-higher.html#storylink=cpy

What McKammon didn’t know in 2011 was that at the very moment he wrote that article, students in North Carolina were taking the TIMSS tests in math and science. When the results were released in 2012, students in North Carolina ranked among the best in the world.

North Carolina is embarked on reckless schemes to get rid of teachers, when it should be developing smart plans to support and retain them. They are doing a great job–those who have not fled the state–and they deserve recognition.

Categories Class size, North Carolina

Update on North Carolina Proposal: The Story Evolves

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2014 //
18

This morning I posted about a bizarre proposal to change (demolish) the teaching profession in North Carolina, called the 60-30-10 plan.

It included features such as, all teachers re-applying for their jobs in 2015. Flipped classrooms. Larger class sizes. Teachers paid per student. No teacher allowed to teach more than 20 years. Constant churn. No profession, just a temp job monitoring work on computers.

And more:

““The NC 60/30/10 Plan, which “embraces high teacher turnover,” would place teachers on one of three tracks: Apprentice, Master or Career.

“Sixty percent of all North Carolinian teachers would make $32,000/year in the Apprentice category and be allowed to teach for up to twenty years, at which time they must retire or move on to another industry.

“Thirty percent of teachers would be eligible for the Master category if they have been teaching for three years, have completed an online training program, and can demonstrate mastery of the teaching method based on “customer survey data.” Master teachers would earn $52,000/year.

“Ten percent of teachers would become Career teachers, making $72,000 if they have an advanced degree and can innovate and lead.

“All teachers would be able to serve in North Carolina for no more than 20 years. If the plan were to be adopted, all teachers in North Carolina would be required to reapply for their jobs in 2015.”

The author of the plan then wrote to this blog to say that the reporter didn’t interview him and that his plan was evolving.

Now the reporter, Lindsay Wagner, wrote a new post saying that she tried to interview the plan’s author but he did not return her call. She apparently has now interviewed him. The 20-year deadline for teachers is gone, he says.

Wagner is the best investigative reporter in North Carolina. Lucky she reported on this pernicious proposal before the extremists in the legislature passed it into law.

Best of all is that the blog became a platform where the new compensation plan was aired to a national audience, bringing an immediate response from its author, and at least a few corrections. But every other part of the plan is still an insult to professional educators.

Categories North Carolina, Teachers and Teaching

North Carolina: Greatest Insult to Teachers Ever Cooked Up in Backroom

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2014 //
221

I thought this must be a joke. It is not.

North Carolina legislators are considering a law that would demolish the teaching profession and encourage teacher turnover.

Call it the “here-today-gone-next-year” policy. The goal is to cut costs by increasing class sizes, pushing out senior teachers, and using technology to “flip” classrooms.

According to NC Policy Watch:

“A new plan to raise some teachers’ salaries while significantly reducing education spending is circulating among lawmakers and education professionals.

“The NC 60/30/10 Plan, which “embraces high teacher turnover,” would place teachers on one of three tracks: Apprentice, Master or Career.

“Sixty percent of all North Carolinian teachers would make $32,000/year in the Apprentice category and be allowed to teach for up to twenty years, at which time they must retire or move on to another industry.

“Thirty percent of teachers would be eligible for the Master category if they have been teaching for three years, have completed an online training program, and can demonstrate mastery of the teaching method based on “customer survey data.” Master teachers would earn $52,000/year.

“Ten percent of teachers would become Career teachers, making $72,000 if they have an advanced degree and can innovate and lead.

“All teachers would be able to serve in North Carolina for no more than 20 years. If the plan were to be adopted, all teachers in North Carolina would be required to reapply for their jobs in 2015.

“The man behind this plan is self-employed and self-described “educational pioneer” Dr. Lodge McCammon. A former Wake County teacher and Friday Institute specialist in curriculum and contemporary media, McCammon heavily promotes the use of video recording to transform teaching and learning.

“In a 2011 op-ed in the News & Observer, McCammon explains that flipped classrooms, in which students can view videotaped instructional materials at their own pace, should allow teachers to accommodate larger classroom sizes–and be paid according to how many students they can teach in one classroom.”

Is there something in the water served in the State Capitol? Do they hate teachers? Or is it that they just don’t like experienced teachers? What’s going on? Can anyone explain this blatant attempt to end teaching as a profession and a career? Will Arne Duncan denounce what this zany legislature is doing to teachers and public education? Will President Obama? He held the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina in 2012; last week, he announced a major job-creating project for the state. Can’t he just speak up?

– See more at: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2014/01/21/latest-nc-teacher-compensation-plan-would-significantly-reduce-education-spending-encourage-teacher-turnover/#sthash.aoS7xNwn.dpuf

Categories North Carolina, Teachers and Teaching

On the Road Again….

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2014 //
49

After a long hiatus, recovering from travel-related deep vein thrombosis (blood clots in the legs), I started my traveling again this week. (My trip to Chicago last week to speak to MLA didn’t count, but I can’t recall why. Arbitrary.)

I am speaking at the University of Florida in Gainesville on Wednesday at 7 pm.

The plan was to fly to Gainesville on Wednesday morning, via Atlanta.

But life does not always work according to schedule.

On Monday morning, I got a robo-call from Delta informing me that my Wednesday flight had been canceled. A major snowstorm was on its way to New York City, would arrive Tuesday morning, and would dump 8-12″ of snow.

My travel agent booked a flight out on Tuesday at 10, changing in Charlotte, NC. A quick transfer, with only 45 minutes between flights.

By the time I boarded my NYC flight, the snow was coming down fast. We were an hour late taking off, as the plane had to be de-iced. Missed the connection. Next flight out of Charlotte to Gainesville at 6 pm. Had good NC BBQ for lunch.

So here I am in the Charlotte airport. Wishing I had landed in Raleigh so I could go join Moral Monday, maybe have the honor of being arrested with good people living Martin Luther King’s dream. But then I would miss the other flight and be even later to Gainesville.

Forgive the rambling, but I felt like talking to friends and I just remembered why I avoid connecting flights and hope never to take one again.

Categories Florida, North Carolina

NC: Here Come the Corporate Charter Carpetbaggers!

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2014 //
16

Jessica B. Swencki of the Brunswick County schools in North Carolina knows a scam when she sees one. With the near total deregulation of charter schools in that state, the corporate charter chains are moving in to where it’s easy to run a school and skim huge profits.

Here’s the deal. A big for-profit operation finds a local board to act as its front during the application process.

One doesn’t have to look any further than the Eastern part of the state for a case study in how savvy companies use this loosely regulated system to pocket millions of taxpayer dollars.

Here’s how it works: A for-profit educational management organization “helps” the nonprofit board write the charter application. Once the charter is granted, the nonprofit board hires the same EMO to operate the charter school. The charter school pays the EMO sizable fees to “manage” the schools – those fees added up to over $15.7 million taxpayer dollars for one EMO in Eastern North Carolina over the past five years.

Coincidentally (or not), in at least one case, the founder of the EMO also happens to be the organizer of a second company that leases facilities and equipment to the charter school (i.e., landlord).

Now, remember, the nonprofit board hired the EMO to track and report all the financial data; and it is the EMO that advises the nonprofit board as to whether the landlord’s fees are reasonable. But don’t forget, the landlord also runs the EMO.

This deal got even sweeter for the landlord this summer when the General Assembly amended a statute. Now the landlord is no longer required to pay any state tax on the land the landlord rents to the charter school. I suppose from a business perspective nothing could be finer. Why isn’t this making headlines? Isn’t this illegal? Surprisingly, no. There is little to no public accountability for the financial decisions made by charter schools, and there is no transparency mandate from the General Assembly.

In a time of shrinking financial markets, charter schools remain an excellent marketplace for savvy corporations looking for consumers.

 

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/06/3511351/how-savvy-companies-can-use-nc.html#storylink=cpy

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization

Parent to NC Legislature: Stop Assaulting Our Teachers!

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2014 //
27

Deborah R. Gerhardt, a parent of school-age children in North Carolina, is upset that her children’s teachers–including their best teachers–are leaving. They are leaving because the Legislature is driving the state’s best teachers away, she says.

Ten years ago, she and her family moved to North Carolina because of its reputation for investing in its public schools.

But that reputation has been squandered.

She writes:

After six years of no real raises, we have fallen to 46th in teacher pay. North Carolina teachers earn nearly $10,000 less than the national average. And if you look at trends over the past decade, we rank dead last: After adjusting for inflation, North Carolina lowered teacher salaries nearly 16 percent from 2002 to 2012, while other states had a median decline of 1 percent. A first-year teacher in North Carolina makes $30,800. Our school district lost a candidate to a district in Kentucky because its starting salary was close to $40,000. It takes North Carolina teachers more than 15 years to earn $40,000; in Virginia it may take only four. Gap store managers on average make about $56,000.

If you talk to a teacher in North Carolina, you will hear the bitter truth of how difficult it is for them to make ends meet. Most teachers at Ben’s school work at least one extra job.  An elementary school teacher told me that his daughters do not have the chance to play soccer or cello like his students. He has no discretionary income left to spare.

What are we teaching our children about the value of education? When my boys see a teacher outside school, they rush up to say hello, eyes bright with admiration and respect.  How I wish our children could minister to the adults in my state. While the majority of us remain quiet, North Carolina teachers face incessant reminders that they are not valued.

Both parties are responsible, she says. The Democrats froze teacher pay. Then the Republicans started an all-out war on teachers in 2013.

 Job security in the form of tenure was abolished. Extra pay for graduate degrees was eliminated. A new law created vouchers so that private academies could dip into the shrinking pool of money that the public schools have left. While requiring schools to adopt the Common Core standards, the legislature slashed materials budgets. According to the National Education Association, we fell to 48th in per-pupil expenditures. State funds for books were cut by about 80 percent, to allocate only $14.26 a year per student. Because you can’t buy even one textbook on that budget, teachers are creating their own materials at night after a long day of work. As if that weren’t enough, the legislature eliminated funding for 5,200 teachers and 3,850 teacher assistants even though the student population grew.  North Carolina public schools would have to hire 29,300 people to get back up to the employee-per-student ratio the schools had in 2008. The result?  Teachers have more students, no current books, and fewer professionals trained to address special needs, and their planning hours are gone now that they must cover lunch and recess.  For public school teachers in North Carolina, the signals sent by this legislation are unambiguous: North Carolina does not value its teachers.   

As a parent who is deeply concerned about the public schools, she is leading a campaign to raise teacher pay to the national average. Friends say this is hopeless because the Legislature is determined to wipe out public education altogether. But she is buoyed by polls showing that three-quarters of people in North Carolina think teachers should be paid more. “A nonpartisan survey from October 2013 showed that 76 percent of North Carolinians agree that public school teachers are paid too little, 71 percent think we cannot keep the most qualified teachers with the current pay scale, and 83 percent support increased pay for higher degrees. I love these data. They prove that the recent legislative assault on teachers does not reflect true North Carolina values.”

It is parents like this who will turn the tide in North Carolina, where the Legislature seems to despise teachers. The bottom line: It is parents like this who will vote these men out of office.

Over the past year, as I learn about what is happening in North Carolina, I keep imagining a scene where the leaders of the Legislature meet each week to think up a new idea to make teachers feel disrespected. “Well, let’s see, we have already taken away the stipends for graduate degrees. We have already taken away due process rights. We have already gotten rid of teachers’ aides. We cut the textbook fund. What can we do now?”

These guys are creative. What will they think up next?

Categories North Carolina, Teachers and Teaching

NC: Third-Graders Will Take 36 New Tests to Prepare for Fourth Grade

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2014 //
161

Last year, Louisiana led the nation in passing absurd laws about education.

This year, that dubious distinction goes to North Carolina. Hardly a day goes by without more evidence of misinformed, specious, nonsensical meddling by the Legislature.

The latest: the Legislature insists that all third graders learn to read, so they mandated 36 new mini-tests for the children.

Could someone explain to State Senate leader Phil Berger that testing is not teaching?

No Child Left Behind mandated that all children would be proficient by 2014. Hello, it’s 2014, and it didn’t happen. Maybe there is a lesson here, if anyone is listening. Mandating that all children must be proficient doesn’t make them proficient. Mandating that all third-graders must read doesn’t mean it will be so.

The time spent on testing is time that should be spent reading, writing, listening, and learning.

As the old chestnut goes, you don’t fatten a pig by weighing it.

Categories North Carolina
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