Students return to school as lawmakers show contempt for public education
Published July 24, 2013
Editorial, Wilmington Star-News, July 23, 2013.
Some Cape Fear area students went back to school Tuesday, full of enthusiasm. But their teachers open the school year in an atmosphere that casts them and our public schools as objects of disdain, at least by Gov. Pat McCrory and the N.C. General Assembly.
The $20.6 billion budget cuts spending on education and does so in a particularly mean-spirited way. It takes money away from public schools in favor of sending tax dollars to private schools that have no accountability to the taxpayers and charter schools that don't have to follow the same rules as the public schools. It cuts the pay boost for teachers who pursue a master's degree, cuts teacher assistants and increases class sizes.
The state has been cast in an unfavorable light of late. A recent, much-talked-about New York Times editorial noted – accurately – that North Carolina was once viewed by the rest of the nation as a "beacon" in the South, a state that had worked hard to improve its education system and diversify its economy by attracting knowledge-based and high-tech manufacturing jobs to a state where agriculture and textiles were once dominant. "In a few short months," the editorial concluded, "Republicans have begun to dismantle a reputation that took years to build."
The budget on the table is a prime example. It is a testament to the current leadership's view that schools can and should be treated like a private business. It expands charter schools that as a group have not proven themselves any better than the public schools, especially if you compare children from the same demographic groups. As with public schools, some excel and some are abysmal. It also allows parents who can afford it, and who can transport their child, to use tax dollars to pay for a private school that may or may not be accredited.
Meanwhile, pay for public school teachers in North Carolina has gone from around the middle of the pack to the bottom five in just a few short years. The saying "you get what you pay for" is truer than many of our lawmakers would like to believe.
We are, as many of the "Moral Monday" protesters have noted, paddling backward, especially when it comes to support for public education.
The budget also fails to reinstate the widely praised N.C. Teaching Fellows Program, which was eliminated in 2011 in yet another slap to teachers and university-based education programs. The House budget would have restored it, but the Senate pulled the plug.
That means a program designed to improve teacher education in North Carolina – and which overall met that goal – will give way to private-school vouchers and charter schools that by their nature will exclude many children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Parents who can't get their children to school do not have the "choices" touted by the school reformers.
Then again, let's see this experiment in action – and evaluate it as harshly as the Honorables insist on for the public schools. If they are supposed to be the solution, they should face severe consequences for not performing, or for only being "average."
Compare every detail based on demographic makeup, teacher quality and especially student test scores. It's easy to say a charter school with 90 percent white, middle-class population outperformed the lowest-performing, highest-poverty schools. Compare them head to head with schools of similar demographic composition. Apples to apples.
We measure the public schools. Private and charter schools should be subject to the same level of scrutiny, and if they don't make the grade – if students who opt out of the public schools for those alternatives don't show adequate improvement – taxpayers' money should be revoked.
The presumptive idea, after all, is to give students a better education than they could get in the public schools.
Right?
July 24, 2013 at 12:35 pm
dj anderson says:
I can't get past the title line of this editorial, could you? Republicans come into control of the state for the first time in 140 years and their actions seem to be a sort of backlash from a century of Democratic action, and now Democrats are having to learn to be the minority party, yet haven't, and this wild rhetoric of exaggeration as this title claims lawmakers have "contempt" for education is making me distant myself from the party just like the high horse "Moral Monday" demonstrations to get negative media.
What is wrong with Democrats? Did anyone not think Republicans would change things? The voters wanted change. Do Democrats think they had utopia before now? They had their way and they did not have utopia. Rev. Barber was wanting & expecting "more" in 2008.
Under Democratic Gov. Perdue & a Democratic General Assembly from 2008 to 2010 teacher pay was not increasing but falling behind due to the economy. Republicans are excited at the thought of increasing teacher pay when the NCAE via their political action arm, ACT supported Democrats every year with money, time and effort. Had the NCAE courted a dozen Republicans, then the legislative vote might have been different.
The Republicans just cut the number of Teacher Assistants (because they don't have tenure & don't have to be in the classroom) to save money, but they increased the number of teachers to cries of whoa from our traditionalists!
Yet, the Democrat of Democrats, President Obama just last month came to Mooresville, NC to exalt their school system as a model for the country because while in the bottom 10% of funded schools, the scores are in the top 10% and they did it by...(insert drum roll)...cutting the number of teachers and increasing the class size to fund laptops & fancy software for all students to take home, and so also lessened the racial learning gap that plagues Orange & Wake systems despite tons of effort.
So, I say, stop putting false thoughts onto others by using language like CONTEMPT & DISDAIN as to their view of education when those words would fit the writers view of Republicans.
Do Democrats really want to go back to what we created? We want change too, for we are 'progressives' aren't we? We want better outcomes for our students. If the $10 million set aside by Republicans for vouchers is there, why not say, OK, and start a progressive private school and compete with the public schools? I agree with Sec. of Ed. June Atkinson that those receiving money should have open books and we can keep demanding that. Some event will show the need, eventually.
There's going to be more charter schools. The NCAE is against that, as are Democrats, but Democrats set up the first 100. There's been success and failure. The state doesn't pay for busses or lunch programs at Charters, saving money. Charters naturally weed out students whose parents aren't involved enough to go to the trouble to get them in Charters and to Charters and dresses for Charters and fed at Charters. Charters also require parent involvement of time or money. Is that a bad thing? Except for select Charters, I don't see them performing better, but where they do, let the traditional schools take note and learn a lesson. I'm say, make the best of the way it is. Get used to playing on the other teams home court.
The total amount of money being spent on education is increased, but the per pupil amount is about $400 a year less. OK, that's the way it is, so what will the Democratic school board do with what they have, where they are at? Cry, moan and groan or get to work to do what they can with what they have. Wake County is going to juggle funds and resources to keep their assistants. Maybe that's good, or maybe the funds could be used on better software? The thing is, we have to keep trying to serve the student as best we can. Don't exaggerate the cuts as the sky falling. Show what more is needed to get some measured outcome.
Where are the leaders of the Democratic Party? Where are they saying, OK, this is the hand we are now dealt, and this is how we are going to play it.
I can tell you what the always underpaid teachers are going to to. Like the Eagles song, they have been shown the highway, and they are going into the classrooms and "take it to the limit, one more time." Teachers don't teach for the money they need, they teach children. So on that accord, I don't worry.
As for greater teacher pay, they should always be seeking more and the NCAE is going to have to court both parties and support Parent should always be seeking better teaching measures & outcomes. The Democratic Party is going to have to start advocating NEW ways. The old ways were voted out.
I'd leave the party to distance myself from their current ways, but I'm just not a republican and while I fancy myself a free thinker, I don't want to be an independent - no party - but part of a group. My group currently is making me hold my nose, as teasers and crybabies do. Where, who, is the Democratic leader? Is it really Rev. Barber? He is serving his position quit well, but not the party as a whole. I keep asking and getting NO answer.
