Forest: Pay NC teachers most in the nation
Published September 20, 2013
by Travis Fain, Greensboro News-Record, September 19, 2013.
Lt. Gov. Dan Forest called Wednesday for North Carolina to pay the nation's highest teaching salaries and to put wireless broadband Internet - along with the devices students need to use it - into every school in the state.
For the broadband initiative he set a goal of 2016. The teaching salary increases would take longer; perhaps a decade or more, he said after speaking to a group of local conservatives gathered for a town hall meeting.
He called current teacher salaries "shameful" and said this can all be accomplished without raising taxes.
"I think there's plenty of money in government (already)," he said. "We'll figure out a way to do it. … I think we need to put our money where our mouth is,"
The ideas were admittedly rough. Forest told the crowd of about 50 people he wasn't ready to roll out the broadband initiative, which he's developing as part of the eLearning Commission he chairs.
After the meeting, Forest said he didn't know how many schools don't have broadband access, or what barriers are keeping them from getting it.
"That's step one," he said.
Forest, a Tea Party conservative who campaigned on smaller government and lower taxes, couldn't put a price tag on the broadband project or teacher salary increases. But back-of-the-envelope math suggests an annual price tag in the billions.
Exactly how much depends on a number of factors. But based on the methodology I used last year, when Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton campaigned for the governor's office on a promise to raise teacher salaries to the national average, Forest's proposal salary proposal would cost $2.3 billion a year to implement fully.
That's close to what state taxpayers spend each year to fund the university system.
This calculation doesn't factor in cost-of-living differences across the country. Nor does it factor in state-by-state differences in benefits. But it also assumes that other states won't raise their average teacher salaries as North Carolina tries to catch up from its current slot: 46th among U.S. states in average teacher pay.
New York has the highest average salaries at $75,279 a year, according to National Education Association figures (pdf). Minus North Carolina's current average of $46,791, multiplied by the 81,020 teachers who are paid with state funds = $2.3 billion in recurring annual costs.
Forest said teacher performance, and rewarding the state's best teachers, should be part of any plan to overhaul teacher pay in North Carolina. He spoke excitedly about a South Korean teacher who makes $4 million a year, primarily from online lectures.
Asked whether he envisions the best North Carolina teachers making more than $100,000 a year, Forest replied, "Why not?"
"Why shouldn't' we do that?" he said.
September 20, 2013 at 9:26 am
Richard Bunce says:
Funny how for the left money is the root of all evil and the private sector needs to think of the common good and not profits... yet the government bureaucrats number one goal is more of the taxpayers money even in the face of their continuing failures...
Route the taxpayers education dollars through the parents of the students and let them decide which education system is meeting their customers needs or not.
September 20, 2013 at 10:39 am
TP Wohlford says:
(shaking head at more stupidity in the name of education)
First, I just left a higher-paying state. Anyone really want to trade test scores with Detroit?
Second... I'm an IT guy. That whole "wireless broadband" thing is just another fad, probably started by a vendor. It puts school districts into a business they don't understand (I've done ed IT work), it competes with local vendors, and no one can show me that it raises test scores. Unless, of course, "World of Warcraft" and colorful pictures of naked people are part of the tests.....
It is akin to Michigan's attempt a few years ago to give a notebook computer to every 6th grader -- an expensive idea, with no support available, with precious little data. Oh, and this "wireless broadband" idea was the darling of school districts there too, but only one was rolled out -- in a university town that already had broadband. All of the bumps in test scores can be explained with the words "Hawthorne Effect."
September 20, 2013 at 11:54 am
TP Wohlford says:
This is my standing question to all who decry funding in eduction: What amount of money is "enough"? Please, give me a number. How much should we be spending? How much spending would make your side say, "Wow, we have enough, we can finally do our job w/o citing funding as our biggest issue"?
September 20, 2013 at 3:21 pm
Richard Bunce says:
The government education industrial complex knows no bounds for it's appetite.
September 20, 2013 at 3:30 pm
Karen Valentine says:
There will have to be broadband internet, and the devices to go with it, in every school in the state because State Testing will be done on computers. That's how it's done with the new Common Core curriculum.
Of course, maybe there would be more money to pay teachers if the curriculum in North Carolina didn't change every two or three years. Every change means new books and more teacher training throughout the state. That's how June Atkinson and her staff at the Department of Instruction keep their jobs while local teachers and assistants lose theirs due to funding cuts.
September 20, 2013 at 5:33 pm
TP Wohlford says:
Ms. Valentine --
First, didn't you used to be an actress?
Second, your school doubtless has "broadband" already -- you know, high speed Internet via T1 lines, or T3 lines, etc. The Clinton administration, as I recall, started the tax that all of us pay on our phone bills to provide high speed Internet to schools.
Third, what they are talking about is a form of 4G wireless. It was deployed at a few places to show that it could work (never in doubt) and then the idea was to provide "free" high speed wireless to all students in the area. As I pointed out, this has a few problems, not the least of which schools don't have the staff to take care of this stuff. What program do you wish to cut to pay for it?
Fourth -- surprisingly we might agree on changing of curriculum. Changing it every few years as fads come and go isn't good. As I recall, the current changes are for COMMON CORE, and that's a national thing. You know -- Obama, the guy you probably voted for, and his people? BTW, doubtless June Atkinson is a Dem as well, and they say that they are the good guys.
