Archives for category: North Carolina
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Extremist North Carolina House Approves $50 Million for Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2013 //
9

Despite last minute efforts to derail vouchers, the North Carolina House appropriations committee approved a budget with $50 million for vouchers. The money would be taken away from the state’s underfunded public schools. North Carolina presently ranks 48th in the nation in supporting its public schools. Some Republican legislators from rural districts pointed out that there are no private schools in their districts, but their concerns were dismissed.

As usual, the vouchers are euphemistically called “opportunity scholarships.”

Categories North Carolina, Privatization, Vouchers

North Carolina Plans Charters for Rural Areas

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2013 //
8

The pro-voucher group called Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina may be invited to open charter schools in rural areas, according to a budget bill in the legislature. The House has set aside $1 million for the group. The same House budget contains cuts for public schools.

Categories Charter Schools, North Carolina, Vouchers

North Carolina: Public Schools First Rallies Against Cuts

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2013 //
11

ACTION ALERT!
publicschoolsfirstnc.org

Help Us Deliver 15,000+ Signatures
to Governor McCrory on Thursday!

It’s time to wake up the people of North Carolina and let them know that our public schools are in danger! Pending bills in the General Assembly could devastate our schools as we know them — lifting the cap on classroom sizes, eliminating classroom positions, slashing eligibility for Pre-K, authorizing vouchers that send public money to private/religious schools, and funneling public money into for-profit schools with no oversight.

Join us for a press conference and rally as we deliver our petition to Governor Pat McCrory! Children are especially welcome to join us — let’s show our lawmakers who will pay the price if they go through with these terrible ideas.

If we don’t let our friends and neighbors know what’s going on, no one will — and it will be too late!

Join Us

Thursday, June 6 at 4:30 PM

State Capitol Building
1 E Edenton Street
Raleigh, NC 27601
Public Schools First NC
(919) 576-0655
info@publicschoolsfirstnc.org

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, For-Profit, North Carolina, Vouchers

NC Teacher: How Our Legislature Is Driving Bad Policy

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2013 //
12

Could things get worse in North Carolina? Here, a teacher describes the bills that are moving towards passage, all of which will undermine public schools and transfer public funds to private corporations.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, North Carolina, Vouchers

North Carolina Passes Voucher Bill

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2013 //
37

On a vote of 27-21, the North Carolina House Education Committee passed a voucher bill (called, euphemistically, “opportunity scholarships”).

As the article linked above notes, private school vouchers will siphon a minimum of $100 million from the public schools over the next three years.

In her summary, Lindsay Wagner of NC Policy Watch reports that one supporter of the bill likened school choice to buying a carton of milk.

Readers may recall that Jeb Bush used the same metaphor when he spoke at last year’s Republican national convention.

Wagner wrote:

Rep. Bert Jones (R-Caswell, Rockingham) compared offering parents their “God-given right” to school choice to selecting which kind of milk they prefer.

“Just because you support HB 944 would not mean, as the opponents would make it seem, that you are against public education,” said Jones. “That basically means that … just because you purchase 2% milk means that something is wrong with whole milk, or 1%, or chocolate milk, or fat free milk, or all the milks out there now that aren’t even milk.”

The school voucher bill should now move on to the House Appropriations committee; however, the possibility remains that it could be inserted into the budget, without further debate.

 

Categories North Carolina, Vouchers

TFA Cleans Up in North Carolina, Where Privatizers Run Legislature

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2013 //
16

As an earlier post showed, Governor Mark Dayton of Minnesota vetoed $1.5 million earmark for Teach for America, noting that the organization has $300 million in assets and thus no reason to be charging the state for its bright but poorly prepared recruits. But TFA scored big in North Carolina, where the reactionary legislature handed over $6 million a year to TFA. This from a parent activist in North Carolina:

The NC Senate just passed their version of a budget in which State support for TFA will total $6 million in both years of the biennium.
We had an outstanding program, the NC Teaching Fellows program http://www.teachingfellows.org.  That received the ax.  Two of our legislators filed a bill to restore the program, but the bill doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. The bigger picture so far with the state budget looks like this:
 
Here’s the Senate’s education budget:
http://www.ncae.org/wp-content/uploads/Education-Section-F.pdf?j=1681267&e=zkids@yahoo.com&l=14260_HTML&u=21281549&mid=1077648&jb=119
 
Here’s what the NC Association of Educators thinks of the budget:
http://www.ncae.org/whats-new/give-the-senate-budget-an-f-viral-campaign/
 
NCAE President’s letter to House Speaker with recap of destructive budget cuts in the version passed in the Senate:
http://view.email.nea.org/?j=fe9515777566017f7c&m=fe8e1570726302797d&ls=fe2c1276776d017f741771&l=ff021574776204&s=fe541c74776303787217&jb=ff6415717c&ju=fe5c16717367037b7011&r=0
Categories Budget Cuts, North Carolina, Privatization, Teach for America TFA

North Carolina Newspaper Puts Public Schools First

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2013 //
13

The Wilmington, North Carolina, Star-News published an editorial recognizing the danger of taking money away from public schools and giving it to charters, vouchers, and private vendors.

The editorial begins:

“Private schools and charter schools may satisfy individual parents, but they will not improve the public schools. They take not only money out of the system but also those students whose parents have the means, work flexibility and determination to take their children to another school, participate in classroom activities and supervise homework.

“It is clear from legislation that is making its way through the General Assembly that the Honorables are not really interested in improving the public schools. If they were, they would be trying to help schools get the resources and high-quality staff needed to help each student meet expectations. They would be increasing expectations, even in schools with children who may have to work harder to meet high standards.”

No state will improve education by funding a dual school system. That’s where North Carolina is heading, and it is not about the kids. It is not about education. It is about a radical ideology that places the values of the market over the values of community and education. The market will favor some groups–the swift and able–and turn the public schools into dumping grounds.

That would be a tragedy for North Carolina and every other state now gripped by free market radicalism.

Categories North Carolina, Privatization, Support for public schools

This Student Refused to Take the State Test

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2013 //
16

Zoe is in the sixth grade in North Carolina. She decided to opt out of the state tests.her parents supported her. At first, the school told her there would be no repercussions. But when testing day came, her family got a letter warning that she would not be allowed to come back to school unless she took the test. Zoe and her dad started the Blue Hat Movement.

You can read about it here.

Zoe refused to take the test and was asked to leave the building. She is a straight A student.

Categories North Carolina, Testing

Big $$$ Behind NC Privatization Bills

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2013 //
9

Same old story in North Carolina as elsewhere: big money from reactionary millionaires funding the theft of public education. American Federation for Children is based in Michigan. It supports vouchers.

Wake the town and tell the people.

Large, out-of-state donors fuel North Carolina’s school “choice” movement
More than $90,000 funneled to state legislative campaigns in 2012

By Lindsay Wagner

In March of 2012, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis and ten other state lawmakers flew to Florida on the dime of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina (PEFNC), an organization known for endorsing conservative education reform initiatives, including school vouchers.

In the year that has followed, North Carolina has absorbed a flood of more than $90,000 in campaign contributions to lawmakers friendly to the school choice movement.

The stated intent of last year’s trip was to educate North Carolina lawmakers about Florida’s tax credit scholarship program, which encourages companies to donate scholarship money for low-income children to attend private schools by providing matching state tax dollars. Critics of the Florida program say it’s a thinly-disguised voucher scheme that diverts funds from the public school system to send kids to private institutions that are not held to the same high standards applied to public schools.

The Florida trip, which cost $8,300, was clearly billed as “educational,” rather than “influential,” by PEFNC in an effort to ensure that the trip did not violate NC lobbying laws.

Since the Florida gathering, lawmakers in the North Carolina legislature have introduced more than 20 bills related to school choice. Rep. Marcus Brandon, one of the eleven lawmakers who went to Florida, argues that “it is unconstitutional not to give students a choice” when it comes to their education. He has introduced six bills related to school choice this session, including two bills that would bring vouchers to the state.

Brandon was also one of several lawmakers who, in 2012, received campaign donations from PEFNC’s PAC as well as individual PEFNC funders.

Though not indicative of any apparent unlawful activity or purpose, the story of where this money originated and how it flowed shines a revealing light on a movement that bills itself as a grassroots effort driven by the demands of average families.

American Federation for Children

Earlier this month, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a copy of the American Federation for Children’s (AFC) “2012 Election Impact Report.” The report reveals that AFC, a well-known national school choice advocacy organization, funneled more than $90,000 to the 2012 election campaigns of Republican and Democratic North Carolina lawmakers who support school choice, with the help of two local PACs in North Carolina.

Categories Charter Schools, North Carolina, Privatization, Vouchers

North Carolina: Public Schools and Students Endangered by Radical Agenda

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2013 //
36

Legislation is advancing in North Carolina that will harm the state’s underfunded public schools and strike a blow against its beleaguered teachers.

North Carolina is a right-to-work state, so there is no collective bargaining, and teachers have no voice in policy decisions about education.

Among the worst of the new bills is a proposal to fund a voucher/tax credit program, removing $90 million from public schools so that 1% of the state’s 1.5 million students may attend private and/or religious schools.

Another bill would strip away due process rights from teachers, so that teachers would have no right to a hearing if fired, no matter how many years of experience they have.

The new legislation would restrict eligibility for preschool, reducing the number of children who may enroll, and remove class size limits for some elementary grades.

Make no mistake (President Obama’s favorite expression, mine too): this legislation will save money in the short run but will cost the state far more in the long term. The Legislature is planning not only to harm public education, but to harm the children who benefit by being in preschool and in classes of reasonable size.

Former Congressman and State Superintendent Bob Etheridge said: “To the folks now running our state government in Raleigh, education reform is just another code word for cut, slash and burn.”

Governor Pat McCrory, who supports the radical anti-teacher, anti-public education agenda, has just named Eric Guckian as his Senior Education Advisor. Guckian was regional director of New Leaders in North Carolina (which recruits “transformational” leaders) and before that, was executive director of Teach for America in the state. He has been a consultant for the Gates Foundation and worked with KIPP. The following comes from the Governor’s press release:

“I am honored and humbled to serve as a member of Governor McCrory’s team,” said Guckian. “This is a critical time for education in our state, and I’m looking forward to working with committed teachers, leaders and community members to ensure that all of North Carolina’s students, regardless of circumstance, achieve an excellent education that will put them on the pathway to a better life; a life of honor, prosperity and service.”

Guckian joins John White in Louisiana and Kevin Huffman in Tennessee as TFA alumni in state-level positions serving reactionary administrations.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Class size, Corporate Reformers, North Carolina, Privatization, Teach for America TFA, Teacher Tenure, Vouchers
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