A salient issue

by | May 5, 2015 | Editor's Blog, Education | 1 comment

In his blog yesterday, Gary Pearce wonders why North Carolina Democrats have backed off promoting education in favor of issues like income equality. An op-ed in today’s News & Observer offers a cautionary tale about cutting taxes at the expense of public education. And a report from the National Education Policy Center says, contrary to the claims of Republicans, class sizes matters–a lot.

Pearce is speaking from experience. During his lifetime and during his career, he watched thoughtful Democrats and progressive business leaders come together to build the best public education system in the South. They invested heavily in the UNC system and built the Research Triangle Park. They supported a tax increase to fund the community college system to provide a well-trained workforce. And they reformed public education by reducing class size, increasing teacher pay and adding accountability.

The plan took vision, commitment, and more than thirty years to fully develop. By the beginning of this century, the Research Triangle had made the Raleigh-Durham area one of the fastest growing places in the country. Our university and community colleges system were consistently cited as among the best in the nation. And the improvements in our public schools system saw slow but steady improvement overall and huge successes in certain parts of the state.

If the current breed of Republicans who run North Carolina today had been in charge in the early 1960s, we would not have the Research Triangle Park, the community college system and our public schools would actually be the failure that Republicans now falsely claim them to be. We also would not be a leader in the South and we would probably not be one of the fastest growing states in the nation. The article on Kansas shows how fast things can go down hill.

Like North Carolina, Kansas elected a Republican governor and GOP-controlled legislature. They went about trying to prove the free-market myth that lower taxes, smaller government and less regulations would actually bring in more revenue. Of course it failed and now schools are paying the price for huge budget shortfalls. Several schools are ending the year early to close budget gaps. Some districts are closing entires schools and class sizes are getting larger. As the NEPC study notes, that’s bad for students.

For years, Republicans have been making the case that class size doesn’t matter in order to justify cutting school budgets. But that’s not true. In particular, “Smaller classes are particularly effective at raising achievement levels of low-income and minority children,” the NEPC study finds. It makes sense and the vast majority of research backs it up, regardless of GOP claims.

Our history shows that investments in education leads to economic growth and higher quality of life. Kansas shows what can happen when the legislature and governor pass cavalier tax cuts on the backs of public education. And now research shows that smaller class sizes make a real difference in students’ lives.

The so-called Carolina Comeback has been less than impressive and the cuts to our schools, universities, and community college have been more than a bit painful. Democrats have a salient issue in education. They should use it.

1 Comment

  1. Progressive Wing

    The Kansas experiment is a total misstep but the GOP there (and, frankly, everywhere ALEC influences it) is unbothered by supply-side economic failure. Why? Because if trickledown doesn’t work, well, that’s fine, because there’s a “winning” outcome –in GOP minds, at least–just the same. And that is it gives them the justification and opportunity to further starve public programs.

    Cuts to public education in Kansas because trickledown economic notions are again running awry are indeed a shame. Balancing its budget on the backs of its students by decreasing classroom days while increasing classroom size is a travesty.

    And I fear that NC will not be far behind Kansas if the GOP-led NCGA refuses to acknowledge that tax cuts for the wealthy and big business are not giving the state the revenues it needs for its most important long-term investment, i.e., the public education of its next generation.

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