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Age-ism: A Reality for Teachers Today, Despite Shortages

By dianeravitch
August 22, 2015 //
53

This post went viral. Nancy Bailey points out that several Presidential candidates are “old,” compared to most teachers.

“Jeb Bush is 62. Hillary Clinton is 67. Donald Trump is 69 and Bernie Sanders is 73. If these individuals were teaching in a public school, and not famous politicians, what would you bet that they’d still be working?

“How many older teachers do you know who are still teaching? While there is much gnashing of teeth in the news about a teacher shortage, I don’t see any effort to bring elderly teachers back to the classroom. And by elderly I’d start at age forty (no, I don’t think 40 is old but they do!). Instead, they’d rather put someone in charge of a class who hasn’t earned credentials!…

“In 2013, The Guardian’s anonymous “Secret Teacher” column titled “There’s an Insidious Prejudice Against Older Teachers” describes a veteran teacher’s unsettling fear that Teach First, which sounds eerily like England’s version of Teach for America, was being highlighted as the answer to education problems—older teachers were cast as culprits….

“Today’s education reformers don’t want teachers who cost more, or who speak their mind about untested curriculum changes, who bitch about Common Core State Standards, high-stakes testing or crummy student treatment. They sure don’t want an elementary teacher who demands recess! Or, a high school teacher who remembers free advanced classes that didn’t rely on AP as a convoluted way to make money for the College Board!

“They don’t want teachers who will point to troubling outside corporate influence by those who are not teachers. In America, that would include people like Microsoft’s Bill Gates (59) or business entrepreneur Eli Broad (82)….

“Teachers who choose teaching as a profession and who want to be there for students—always—are critical. Students deserve to experience good teachers of all ages. But older teachers have been targeted for years. Even if they hang in there, most are not respected as they deserve.

“Their voices are ignored. Their valuable experience cast off. How often do they get to do original planning these days? How often do they have to put up with scripted, commercialized material foisted into their classrooms?…

“Today’s teaching workforce is built upon the desire on the part of education reformers to have transitory teachers. Here today, gone tomorrow! That is the way to keep costs down and teachers aligned to curriculum changes and charter school control.

“They will not build teachers who commit to students in a long-term career, who will strive to remain in teaching and do what is right and good to help students learn.

“And when students get older they won’t have any teachers to go back to visit. The older teachers just won’t be there.”

Categories Teachers

BREAKING: Union Activist in Holyoke Wins Right to Hearing

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2015 //
13

Gus Morales, the outspoken leader of the Holyoke, Massachusetts, Teachers Association, won the right to a hearing from the state’s Department of Labor Relations after he was laid off by his district.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association and his colleagues believe he was dismissed because he led protests against the state takeover of the district.

“The state Department of Labor Relations (DLR) has found “probable cause” to believe that the Holyoke Public Schools illegally fired Holyoke Teachers Association (HTA) President Gus Morales because of his activism as a union leader.

“The DLR will hold a hearing on the complaint, which stems from a charge filed by the HTA on June 25. The DLR complaint is similar to a grand jury indictment; the upcoming hearing will have many of the characteristics of a trial, with witnesses and cross-examination.

“Because I speak out against policies that I see as bad for our students and bad for our educators, I have been targeted for two straight years,” said Morales, whose employment contract with the Holyoke Public Schools was not renewed at the end of the school year.

“Morales, who does not have professional teaching status, was similarly dismissed at the end the 2013-14 school year after his election to lead the HTA. Then, as now, the DLR issued a complaint that found reason to believe that Morales was illegally terminated for his union activism.”

”

Morales and the HTA were vocal opponents of the takeover, which was imposed in April despite widespread objections from the community and several of its elected leaders.

“It is an outrage that an educator and leader such as Gus Morales, who has spoken out for the students and the Holyoke community, is being targeted for dismissal,” said MTA President Barbara Madeloni. “The MTA will not tolerate attacks on educators, especially when the attack is meant to cause fear among those who challenge the deeply flawed accountability system used to punish educators, students and communities. Gus has the courage to address the real issues affecting Holyoke — such as economic and racial injustice — and the MTA supports him and the HTA in holding the state accountable for providing resources that the community can use to combat these problems.”

“Throughout stakeholder meetings to craft a “turnaround” plan for Holyoke Public Schools, Morales and others from the HTA raised concerns about the influence of standardized tests, the need to provide social services to students living in poverty, inadequate programs for students on special education plans, the lack of ethnic diversity in the teaching ranks and other issues that they felt that the receiver needs to address.”

Morales never got a bad evaluation until he spoke out against bad policies.

Categories Massachusetts, Teachers, Unions

What Happened to the Teachers of New Orleans?

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2015 //
13

This article is an outstanding and heart-breaking account of the harsh treatment meted out to the public school teachers of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It appears in Education Week.

About 7,000 veteran teachers were summarily fired. Most were African-American and most were women. They fought their firing in the courts because they did not receive due process, but a few months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal. Their legal battle was defeated, like them.

Many of their schools were physically destroyed. Most were turned into charter schools. Public schools that were once the heart of their communities, are gone. Now everything is choice, as though a goal of reform was to destabilize black communities.

Defenders of the wholesale privatization, like Leslie Hacobs, defend it on grounds that test scores are up. We all know that the data about this experiment are hotly contested. Since so many children never returned after the storm, it is hard to make fair comparisons.

Read this article and ask whether it was a good trade off: ruining the lives of thousands of dedicated teachers and uprooting historic communities as the price of a few more points on standardized tests?

Categories Charter Schools, New Orleans, Race, Teachers

North Carolina Teacher: Yes, Ms. Berg, There IS a War on Public Education

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2015 //
10

This is a debate about the state of public education in North Carolina.

First James D. Hogan, a former high school English teacher, wrote a scathing article about the war against public education in North Carolina, waged by the Governor and the Legislature against teachers, students, and public schools.

Then came a rebuttal by Brenda Berg, a spokesperson for business, saying that Hogan was wrong.

Now comes an article by North Carolina high school teacher Stuart Egan, refuting Brenda Berg, point by point.


Ms. Berg,

I read with great interest your essay, entitled “The real war on education in North Carolina.” It was a carefully crafted response to James Hogan’s widely circulated op-ed piece, entitled “The war on North Carolina’s public schools,” in which he explained actions taken in the last few years by a GOP-led General Assembly that have seriously handcuffed the public school system in our state.

You are certainly right in many respects: There is a war on public education and much of the rhetoric surrounding this war is “built on half-truths” and masterfully spun double-speak.

You responded to Hogan’s arguments in a very professional and matter-of-fact manner, taking each of his supporting points and rebutting them with your own information. Yet, I would be remiss in not offering some clarification and insights as a veteran North Carolinian educator who has seen much in these last few years. In many instances, you have not only misinterpreted the data, you have also not explained the whole picture.

The first item you “debunked” from Mr. Hogan’s article was his assertion that “Among their first targets: … cuts to public schools, including laying off thousands of teachers… The state lost thousands more teacher and teacher assistant positions.”
You countered with numbers from the Department of Public Instruction about how the number of teachers in the state has actually increased since 2008. You said:

“We don’t know where Mr. Hogan finds evidence for the layoff of thousands of teachers. The North Carolina Statistical Profile from the Department of Public Instruction shows that in 2008, North Carolina had 97,676 teachers. Since 2008, the largest decline in the number of teachers employed in North Carolina was between 2011 and 2012, when the state employed 641 fewer teachers. There is no evidence that teachers were laid off; rather, it is more likely that vacant positions remained unfilled. In 2012, the state hired an additional 1,357 teachers and since then, the number of teachers has grown to 98,988 in 2014.”

With this use of numbers, you appear correct, but you are actually ignoring one very important item: growth of population. North Carolina has grown tremendously in the last few years. In fact, the number of teachers in 2014 should have been much higher to keep the same student to teacher ratio we had in 2008. Instead, high school class size caps have been removed statewide, and teachers are teaching more students per day.

Add to that your observation that vacant positions were unfilled. That in and of itself tells one there is no longer a teacher employed to “fill” that position. The duties remain, but now others have to assume them along with already growing responsibilities. Two teachers now are doing the work of what three teachers did in 2008. Attrition rates, early retirement, and reduction in force (RIF) are all real forces in schools today, and the effect is akin to layoffs.

Furthermore, do the numbers you refer to include all of the teacher assistants, media assistants, administrators, and other classified personnel who are no longer employed?

The next item you attempted to debunk involved state funding for schools. Mr. Hogan said, “Two years later, in the last budget cycle, 2014-15, the legislature provided roughly $500 million less for education than schools needed.”
You countered with the PolitiFact claim that “In fact, by 2014-15, North Carolina was still spending $100 million less on public education than it had before the economic recession.” Then you further explained:

“North Carolina is spending more today on public education than it did before the economic recession, even when adjusted for inflation. The public education appropriation for the 2014-15 school year is $11,013,800,000—a significantly higher number than the $9,406,300,000 allocated in 2007, just before the Great Recession. When adjusted for inflation, North Carolina is also spending more per pupil now than in any of the ten previous years, with the exception of 2009, a peak budget year.”

Again, you simplified the numbers. There is more there and much of it has to do with population increase and the need to educate more students.

Let me use an analogy. Say in 2008, a school district had 1,000 students in its school system and spent $10 million dollars in its budget to educate them. That’s a $10,000 per-pupil expenditure. Now in 2015, that same district has 1,500 students and the school system is spending $11.5 million to educate them. According to your analysis, that district is spending more total dollars now than in 2008 on education, but the per-pupil expenditure has gone down, significantly by over $2,300 dollars per student or 23 percent.

A WRAL report from this past school year stated, “In terms of per-pupil spending, an NEA report ranks North Carolina 46th in the United States in 2014-15, up from 47th in 2013-14. But spending actually drops from $8,632 to $8,620 per student from last year to this year.” According to Governing magazine, even the Census Bureau confirms that we are spending less per student than in years past.

Mr. Hogan stated next, “And when Republicans finally acted to increase teacher pay, they claimed to make the biggest pay hike in state history–but in reality only bumped up paychecks by an average of $270 per year.”
Your rebuttal was:

“We find no evidence that supports Mr. Hogan’s claim that the teachers received on average a $270 increase in salary. The average salary for a North Carolina teacher in 2013, the year before the raise was added, was $44,990. If you multiply this number by the average percent raise, 6.9 percent (according to calculations from Fiscal Research), teachers received on average an additional $3,104 dollars on their annual paycheck, plus benefits….

In 2014, the General Assembly passed an average 6.9 percent raise for teachers. This year, both the House and the Senate have proposed additional teacher raises averaging 4 percent. Combined, this nearly 11 percent average raise makes significant progress toward addressing the 17.4 percent decline (adjusted for inflation) in salaries teachers experienced between 2003 and 2013.”

The operative word here is “average.” Beginning teachers saw an average pay hike of more than 10 percent, yet the more years a teacher had, the less of a “raise” was given. The result was an AVERAGE hike of 6.9 percent, but it was not an even distribution. In fact, some veterans saw a reduction in annual pay because much of the “raise” was funded with what used to be longevity pay. And as a teacher who has been in North Carolina for these past ten years, I can with certainty tell you that my salary has not increased by 6.9 percent.

Mr. Hogan’s claim that there was only an average salary increase of $270 comes when one takes the actual money allocated in the budget for the increase and dividing that evenly across the board.

That raise you refer to was funded in part by eliminating teachers’ longevity pay. Like an annual bonus, all state employees receive it—except, now, for teachers—as a reward for continued service. Yet the budget you mentioned simply rolled that longevity money into teachers’ salaries and labeled it as a raise.

In the point about out-of-state teacher recruitment, Mr. Hogan said, “Meanwhile, Texas and Virginia started actively recruiting North Carolina teachers to go work in their states. It didn’t take much to convince Tarheel teachers to flee…”

You responded:

“Relatively few North Carolina teachers are leaving to teach in other states, and fewer are leaving now than before the economic recession. The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s 2014 Teacher Turnover Report reports that only 455 left for this reason in 2014—just three percent of the 13,616 teachers who left their jobs last year. The percentage of teachers “fleeing” to other states was actually higher before the recession, as 3.5 percent of teachers in 2008 left to teach in other states.”

Editor’s Note: This paragraph in Berg’s original article has been corrected. It now states:

Relatively few North Carolina teachers are leaving to teach in other states, and rates have been relatively consistent since the economic recession. The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s 2014 Teacher Turnover Report reports that the percentage of teachers leaving for other states rose slightly in 2014 (734, or 5.4 percent) with fewer leaving (341, or 3.5 percent) in 2012, consistent with the rate in 2008 (467, or 3.5 percent).

Teachers are not simply leaving North Carolina to teach in other states; many are leaving the profession altogether. The 2014 Teacher Turnover Report only states the information given to DPI. Not all teachers who leave teaching jobs take the survey, but from what I have witnessed, many teachers leave the profession because they cannot simply afford to raise a family on a North Carolina teacher’s salary. Younger mothers cannot afford day care, and teachers in border counties are easily lured to other states. They do not have to be recruited.

Furthermore, other states like Texas have had recruitment fairs in the state, and highly publicized ones at that. Most notably were a couple done by the Houston Public Schools, who are now led by Terry Grier, the former Guilford County superintendent. He knows the conditions in North Carolina and took advantage of the situation. While he may not have taken entire faculties with him, the fact that he was actively recruiting in North Carolina shows how conditions have deteriorated in this state.

So many teachers left the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System this past year (some estimate that it was more than 1,000), that the school system participated in over 50 job fairs, according to a May 25th WBTV report. As of two weeks ago, over 300 positions were still posted. And the CMS system is in a border county. Just look in York County, SC and see how many of their teachers were formerly employed by our state.

There is more. If you want to see a brilliant teacher, with no research assistant, doing a demolition job, keep reading.

You be the judge.

Categories Budget Cuts, North Carolina, Teacher Pay, Teachers

The Onion: State Sets High Goal for Teachers

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2015 //
8

The Onion is the best journal in the nation on the subject of education. With tongue in cheek, they see through the fraud of corporate reform.

In this article, the Onion reports that the Illinois State Department of Education set a new goal for teachers:

“In an effort to hold classroom instructors more accountable, the Illinois State Board of Education unveiled new statewide education standards Friday that require public school teachers to forever change the lives of at least 30 percent of their students. “Under our updated educator evaluation policy, teachers must make an unforgettable, lifelong impact on at least three of every 10 students and instill a love of learning in them that lasts the rest of their lives,” said chairman James Meeks, adding that based on the annual assessments, if 30 percent of students don’t recall a particular teacher’s name when asked to identify the most influential and inspiring person in their lives, that instructor would be promptly dismissed.”

Even better, teachers will be held accountable if more than 40% end up in prison.

Guess the Onion has been reading Raj Chetty.

Categories Humor, Teachers

Peter Greene and Alexandra Miletta on the Lederman Case

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2015 //
57

Bruce Lederman is suing the state of New York on behalf of his wife Sheri Lederman, a fourth grade teacher in the public schools of Great Neck, Néw York. The Ledermans contend that the state teacher evaluation system is irrational, and Bruce collected affidavits from leading scholars to support his claim, as well as laudatory statements from students, parents, and Sheri’s principal and superintendent.

Alexandra Milletta, a teacher educator and high school classmate of Sheri’s, attended the trial and reported her impressions on her blog.

She wrote:

“What I witnessed was a masterful take down of the we-need-objectivity rhetoric that is plaguing education. So I should begin by saying that I am hopeful, because it seems someone with the power to make a difference gets it. Judge McDonough gets that it’s all about the bell curve, and the bell curve is biased and subjective….

“As you may notice, we’ve come a long way from getting a 91 out of 100 on a test and knowing that was an A-. Testing today is obtuse and confusing by design. In New York State, we boil it down to a ranking from one to four. That’s right, there’s even jargon for “ones and twos” that is particularly heinous when you learn that politicians have interests in making more than 50% of students fall in those “failing” categories. Today the state released the test score results for students in grades 3-8 and their so-called “proficiency” is reported as below 40% achieving the passing levels. By design the public is meant to read this as miserable failure.

“The political narrative of public education failure extends next to the teachers, who must demonstrate student learning based on these faulty tests, even if they don’t teach the subjects tested, and even if they teach students who face hurdles and hardships that have a tremendous impact on their ability to do well on the tests. In Sheri’s case, her rating plunged from 13 out of 20 points to 1 out of 20 points on student growth measures. Yet her students perform exceedingly well on the exams; once you are a “four” you can’t go up to a “four plus” because you’ve hit the ceiling. In fact, one wrong answer could unreasonably mark you as a “three” and you would never know. Similarly, the teacher receives a student growth score that is also based on a comparison to other teachers. When it emerged in the hearing today that the model, also known as VAM, or value-added, pre-determined that 7% of the teachers would be rated “ineffective” Judge McDonough caught on to the injustice that lies at the heart of the bell curve logic: where you rank in the ratings is SUBJECTIVE…..

The State’s representative, Colleen Galligan, tried to defend the indefensible:

“The lame explanation from Colleen Galligan was that the model may not be perfect but the state tries to compare each student to similar students. The goal, she offered, is to find outliers in the teaching pool who consistently have a pattern of ineffectiveness, to either give them additional training or fire them. At this point Judge McDonough offered her a chance to explain the dramatic drop in Sheri’s score. “On its face it must mean students bombed the test (speaking as one who has bombed tests)” and this produced laughter in the courtroom. For who hasn’t bombed at least one test in their life? Who has not experienced that dread and fear of being labeled a failure? Then Judge McDonough asked rhetorically, “Did they learn nothing?” The only answer she could come up with, was that in this case Dr. Lederman’s students, although admittedly performing well compared to other students, did worse than 98% of students across the state in growth. At this point it was pretty clear to everyone present that this made absolutely no sense whatsoever.”

Alexandra believes and hopes that this trial may be the beginning of the end for VAM and other misuses of test scores to rank and rate teachers.

Peter Greene did not attend the trial, but he cut to the chase: “God Bless Sheri Lederman!” I would add to that “God Bless Bruce Lederman” for fighting for his wife and her professional reputation. Together, the Ledermans are fighting for all teachers.

Peter read Alexandra Miletta’s post, cited above. He writes:

“The New York teacher is in court this week, standing up for herself and for every teacher who suffers under New York’s cockamamie evaluation system. If she wins, there will be shockwaves felt all across America where teachers are evaluated based on VAM-soaked idiocy….

“Talking about the curve is the best way to help civilians understand why these teacher eval systems are giant heaps of baloney. If you’re old enough, you remember curves because they suck– get yourself in a class with the smart kids who all score 100% on a test and suddenly missed-one-question 95% is a C. Of course, younger civilians may not have such memories of the curve because over the past few decades most teachers have come to understand that curving is not a Best Practice.

“Evaluating teachers on the curve means that even if the VAM-sauce score actually meant something, the teacher evaluation itself will not mean jack. In a system in which every single teacher is above the bar in excellence, those teachers who are the least above the bar will be labeled failures.”

Maybe one thoughtful judge will put the VAMMERS in their place: out of the classroom.

Categories New York, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers, VAM (value-added modeling)

Steve Cohen: Whom Do You Trust with Your Child? Teachers or Hedge Funders?

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2015 //
18

Steve Cohen, educator from Long Island, writes:

“One of our favorite quotes: Einstein: Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.

“That which counts that cannot be counted is the historical process by which young human beings act to shape their own potential. Genuine teaching is the task of guiding these young people to complete this fundamental task of becoming an adult with the most care, grace, intelligence and wisdom.

“I would bet that everyone of us who learned from a great teacher knows exactly what I’m talking about. Count what you will, but this uncountable experience is essential in real education of the young.

“Do we really want hedge fund overlords in charge of this basic part of childhood and adolescence?

“I’ll also bet that these hedge funds folks send their kids to schools that embrace what I’m saying to the fullest. Their kids’ education shall not be subjected to foolish accountability–which wastes kids’ precious time growing up.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Teachers

Oklahoma Coping with Teacher Shortage

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2015 //
19

Another success for “reform.” Oklahoma, like most other states, is facing teacher shortages.

Remember the “reformers” who said we need to fire teachers whose students had low scores? Who said that “great” teachers should have larger class sizes? They keep saying it, and they have promoted ruinous policies that cause teachers to take early retirement.

“An Oklahoma survey last year showed about 1,000 unfilled vacancies, resulting in larger class sizes and the elimination of some courses. The state’s average teacher salary is $44,128 — 49th in the nation….

“Some former teachers say an increase in mandatory testing and a sense of hostility from lawmakers has crushed morale. Recent Oklahoma measures are designed to increase rigor as well as imposing a grading system for schools that many teachers and administrators felt was unfair. But per-pupil funding has kept declining, and teachers haven’t received a pay raise in nearly a decade.

“We used to be treated as professionals who were allowed to have autonomy in our classrooms and play to our strengths or our background or education,” said Rebecca Simcoe, a high school English teacher in Tulsa with a doctorate who resigned last year to do nonprofit work. “Now we’re expected to be automatons following their robotic instructions, just getting these kids to pass tests.”

Categories Oklahoma, Teacher Pay, Teachers

LAUSD Makes New Allegations Against Famed Teacher Rafe Esquith; Esquith Sues

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2015 //
100

In the ongoing investigation of Rafe Esquith, the Los Angeles Unified School District brought new allegations against him.

Famed teacher Rafe Esquith sued the Los Angeles school district Thursday as officials released new abuse allegations against the fifth-grade instructor.

Esquith, who earned renown for introducing his Hobart Boulevard Elementary students to Shakespeare, alleged that the district mishandled an investigation into misconduct charges against him.

The veteran teacher was removed from his classroom in April. The probe began when a colleague expressed concern about a joke Esquith made to his students. Since then, the investigation has expanded to include a review of Esquith’s theatrical nonprofit and allegations that he abused a boy more than 40 years ago.

Esquith, 61, has denied wrongdoing.

L.A. Unified disclosed Thursday that its inquiry now involves the inappropriate touching of minors both before and during Esquith’s teaching career and that multiple photos of a sexual nature were found on his school computer.

In correspondence to Esquith’s attorneys, released by the district, officials said that the investigation “has revealed serious allegations of highly inappropriate conduct involving touching of minors before and during Mr. Esquith’s time at the School District.”

The letter also claims the investigation “revealed multiple inappropriate photographs and emails of a sexual nature” on his school computer as well as email correspondence with students that was “inconsistent” with the district’s code of conduct. The letter also referred to allegations of “threats to a parent and two students.”

In addition, the district said there were “possible ethical and District policy violations” related to Esquith’s nonprofit, the Hobart Shakespeareans.

One of Esquith’s attorneys, Mark Geragos, called the allegations outrageous.

“I would have thought rational minds would have come to their senses, but they are so frustrated by the fact that every one of their allegations, and the things they want to gin up, came up as a dry hole,” Geragos said.

The attorney added that he had seen the letter with detailed allegations only because a reporter had forwarded it to him. He said that as of Thursday afternoon, he had not yet received the letter from L.A. Unified.

Esquith’s suit seeks his return to school as well as damages for alleged defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, retaliation and age discrimination. According to the litigation, stress from the investigation led to Esquith’s recent hospitalization for thrombosis.

Categories Los Angeles, Teachers

North Carolina Business Leader: Critics of Reform Are Wrong

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2015 //
10

In a recent post, North Carolinian James D. Hogan charged that the Governor and Legislature of North Carolina are waging war on public education. The state has rapidly expanded charters and vouchers, killed the North Carolina Teaching Frllows program and transferred millions to Teach for America, adopted Jeb Bush’s A-F school grading system (which identifies schools with high levels of poverty), and deferred salary increases for teachers so that North Carolina teacher salaries are among the lowest in the nation.

The North Carolina business organization BEST says Hogan is wrong. I received the following response to Hogan’s article:

Editorial: The Real War on Education in North Carolina

by Brenda Berg, President & CEO of BEST NC (Business for Educational Success and Transformation in North Carolina)

Former teacher James Hogan caught the attention of national media outlets last week with his inflammatory proclamation that North Carolina is waging a step-by-step war on public education. As education advocates who believe our state has the potential to have the best education system in the nation, we were dismayed.

There is no disagreement that education in our state faces many challenges and we undoubtedly have a long way to go to provide every student with an outstanding education that helps them reach their full potential. But opinion articles that oversimplify this complex issue are the real war on North Carolina’s education system, demoralizing dedicated educators and communities that have endured tough economic times and are working hard to deliver a high quality education for all students.

North Carolina’s flatlining academic performance did not begin in 2012 and cannot be placed on the shoulders of one party, one administration or one set of state policies. Today’s education system has been decades in the making and is a product of the changing dynamics of economies and populations. It is imperative that we understand these complexities if we are to work together to find effective solutions that will make our education system the best in the nation. We cannot do this with over-simplification built on half-truths and which incites a polarized dialogue.

As Hogan points out, North Carolina is facing declining interest in the teaching profession, and has been for several years, but so is nearly every other state in the nation. The implication that North Carolina’s decline is the direct result of eliminating the Teaching Fellows program deliberately ignores the fact that the program only prepared about three percent of the 10,000 teachers North Carolina hires every year.

More blatantly false, Hogan claims that the Fellows program “produced droves of quality teachers who filled hard-up school classrooms.” In fact, the program’s own sponsoring organization transparently reported, “Teaching Fellows taught in schools and classrooms with greater concentrations of higher-performing, lower-poverty students… Fellows today tend to be clustered in the larger metropolitan areas where teacher recruitment overall has historically been less problematic.” Building on this knowledge, the current NC House budget includes funding for an updated teacher scholarship program that would graduate up to 1,000 teachers each year—specifically for the state’s hardest-to-staff schools and subject areas.

Perpetuating more myths, Mr. Hogan mentions the oft-cited anecdotes of public school teachers fleeing North Carolina for higher paying jobs in other states, implying—without evidence—a direct link to policy changes made in the past few years. In fact, the state’s own data show that only three percent of teachers who left their classrooms in 2014 moved to another state. That is half a percent lower than the number of teachers who found work in other states in 2008.

On teacher salaries, we agree that more work is needed. North Carolina educators went as much as five years—many of those under previous administrations—without any pay raises. This has left teacher pay in a decades-long hole that will take several years to reverse. But the current leadership took a big step forward with last year’s pay increase that averaged seven percent (not the $270, claimed in the blog) and this year, both current House and Senate budgets recommend an additional pay increase averaging four percent. This is real progress. We encourage our elected officials to continue this progress toward getting teacher pay to where it needs to be.

Not mentioned in the blog, but at least as important as teacher salaries, is the quality of North Carolina’s school leadership. Survey after survey shows that teachers care about pay, but they care even more about the quality and preparation of the leader they work for, just like other professionals. After years of scant attention to principal leadership, the General Assembly this year has proposed a $10M investment in principal preparation that would significantly raise the bar on what we expect of and provide for school leaders. If approved, the program would prepare potentially hundreds of principals for North Carolina public schools every year.

Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Hogan marginalizes the importance of student achievement by mocking school letter grades and not once mentioning academic achievement. In truth, there are schools in North Carolina that have as few as 5% of students meeting proficiency—a fact that is far more profound and worthy of media attention than a purported war on education based on half-truths. These academic disparities have existed for far longer than one political cycle. North Carolinians need to know this fact and use it as a call to action in support of public education.

Rather than pointing fingers, we encourage our fellow North Carolinians to do what we do best—work proactively and collaboratively to find solutions that will elevate educators to the status they deserve. In addition to a commitment to raise teacher pay, a powerful proposal is on the table right now with House and Senate budget negotiators. The plan offers a comprehensive approach to elevate teachers and principals by recruiting, preparing, developing and supporting great educators so they can focus on what matters most to them and to us—our students. This is the antithesis of a “war” on public education and the most-likely antidote to persistently low-performing schools.

It is time to stop pointing fingers and start looking for solutions to real problems. We owe our children a public discourse that models the collaboration, respect, and optimism that we hope they will exhibit as adults. We also owe educators a vision for a productive path forward, one that values their contributions and engages them as the highly skilled professionals they are. Let’s solve these problems together and leverage the incredible potential of our state to provide our children the best education system in the nation.

Fact Check: James Hogan’s blog post, as quoted in the Washington Post
North Carolina business leaders understand that great solutions to complex problems are built on difficult, respectful conversations and diverse perspectives. We don’t shy away from constructive disagreements – but we also don’t shy away from the facts. A fact-check of a Mr. Hogan’s most concerning points is included below.

“Among their first targets: … cuts to public schools, including laying off thousands of teachers…The state lost thousands more teacher and teacher assistant positions.”

• We don’t know where Mr. Hogan finds evidence for the layoff of thousands of teachers. The North Carolina Statistical Profile from the Department of Public Instruction shows that in 2008, North Carolina had 97,676 teachers. Since 2008, the largest decline in the number of teachers employed in North Carolina was between 2011 and 2012, when the state employed 641 fewer teachers. There is no evidence that teachers were laid off, rather it is more likely that vacant positions remained unfilled. In 2012, the state hired an additional 1,357 teachers and since then, the number of teachers has grown to 98,988 in 2014.

• Error of omission: while Teacher Assistants were mentioned four times in the blog, the proposed reduction in student-to-teacher ratios in Kindergarten through grade three to as low as 15 students per teacher was not mentioned once.

“Two years later, in the last budget cycle, 2014-15, the legislature provided roughly $500 million less for education than schools needed.”

• Mr. Hogan’s own source, PolitiFact, rated this claim “Half-True.”

“In fact, by 2014-15, North Carolina was still spending $100 million less on public education than it had before the economic recession.”

• North Carolina is spending more today on public education than it did before the economic recession, even when adjusted for inflation. The public education appropriation for the 2014-15 school year is $11,013,800,000–a significantly higher number than the $9,406,300,000 allocated in 2007, just before the Great Recession. When adjusted for inflation, North Carolina is also spending more per pupil now than in any of the ten previous years, with the exception of 2009, a peak budget year.

“And when Republicans finally acted to increase teacher pay, they claimed to make the biggest pay hike in state history–but in reality only bumped up paychecks by an average of $270 per year.”

• We find no evidence that supports Mr. Hogan’s claim that the teachers received on average a $270 increase in salary. The average salary for a North Carolina teacher in 2013, the year before the raise was added, was $44,990. If you multiply this number by the average percent raise, 6.9% (according to calculations from Fiscal Research), teachers received on average an additional $3,104 dollars on their annual paycheck, plus benefits.

• In 2014, the General Assembly passed an average 6.9 percent raise for teachers. This year, both the House and the Senate have proposed additional teacher raises averaging 4 percent. Combined, this nearly 11 percent average raise makes significant progress toward addressing the 17.4 percent decline (adjusted for inflation) in salaries teachers experienced between 2003 and 2013.

“Meanwhile, Texas and Virginia started actively recruiting North Carolina teachers to go work in their states. It didn’t take much to convince Tarheel teachers to flee…”

• Relatively few North Carolina teachers are leaving to teach in other states, and fewer are leaving now than before the economic recession. The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s 2014 Teacher Turnover Report reports that only 455 left for this reason in 2014—just three percent of the 13,616 teachers who left their jobs last year. The percentage of teachers “fleeing” to other states was actually higher before the recession, as 3.5 percent of teachers in 2008 left to teach in other states.

“The Teaching Fellows program produced droves of quality teachers who filled hard-up school classrooms.”

• Most Teaching Fellows did not teach in hard-to-staff areas of North Carolina. In the Public School Forum’s Teaching Fellows Report from earlier this year, the Forum reported that “Teaching Fellows taught in schools and classrooms with greater concentrations of higher-performing, lower-poverty students” and “tend to be clustered in the larger metropolitan areas where teacher recruitment overall has historically been less problematic than in the state’s poorer and rural districts.”

“The Teaching Fellows program…budget was a modest one, and yet Republicans uprooted it from the state budget and killed the entire program. The result? Enrollment in teacher prep programs in the UNC system has dropped 27 percent in the last five years.”

• The number of students in UNC system education programs reached a peak in 2010, but it has declined since. This decline started while Democrats were in office and cannot be solely attributed to the actions of a Republican-led legislature or the elimination of the Teaching Fellows program.

• Mr. Hogan implies that the decreased enrollment in teacher programs is the direct result of the elimination of the Teaching Fellows program. However, the program only prepared about three percent (3%) of the 10,000 teachers North Carolina hires every year.

“More than 700 of the state’s public schools (nearly thirty percent) received a score of D or F. Many parents struggled to understand how so many schools could so quickly fail. But instead of demonstrating the quality of a school, the state’s new grading measure much more accurately described the socio-economic status of its enrolled students–nearly every one of the state’s “failing” schools were considered high-poverty schools.”

• Using ‘growth’ as an alternative measure, which is not based on socio-economic status, there are 591 schools across the state that are failing to meet growth. These schools did not ‘so quickly fail’—these schools were failing for a very long time, but remained virtually ignored. While the current letter grades are an imperfect measure (there are 86 D and F schools that exceeded growth, for example), we hope these grades will compel North Carolina to take a positive, comprehensive approach to improving public schools.

“We’re five weeks overdue on the budget, and some legislators are saying the budget might not be settled until Labor Day.”

• In the past 15 years, North Carolina has passed a budget on-time just four times, and two of those were on the final day of the fiscal year. We still haven’t approached the 88 extra days it took in 2001 or the 92 days it took in 2002. We agree with Mr. Hogan that passing a budget after the beginning of the school year does not benefit schools or students. But what matters more is whether the final approved budget results in a better budget for education.

Categories Corporate Reform, North Carolina, Teachers
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