Republicans’ problem with education in North Carolina runs deep and wide. It’s not just teachers’ salaries that have people upset. It’s their whole approach to public schools. They want to see a decentralized school system that subsidizes private education, removes pesky regulations for charters, and transfers the burden of paying for schools from the state to the counties.
Unfortunately for them, that’s not what the people of North Carolina want. Since the Great Depression, the state has assumed the primary responsibility for funding public education. Originally, Depression-era Governor O. Max Gardner implement the move to reduce oppressive property taxes when towns and counties were defaulting on their debt. Later, state funding of education was written into the state constitution. Article IX, section 2, says clearly, “The General Assembly shall provide by taxation and otherwise for a general and uniform system of free public schools.”
The GOP would like to change that formula. Republican legislators have complained that the state picks up too much of the tab. Ideologically, they believe that local school boards should have more control and more financial responsibility. They also want to satisfy their base by subsidizing religious education through vouchers and unregulated charter schools.
If one thing derails the GOP revolution in North Carolina, it will be their approach to public education. They claim the system is broken and they want to fix it by dismantling it. That logic’s not too far from saving the village by destroying it.
Our system is not broken. While we may have schools that are struggling, we also have plenty that are excelling. U.S News and World Report lists 97 North Carolina high schools among the best in the nation. The schools that are struggling are overwhelmingly in poor, rural counties, areas that are generally in economic decline. Voucher programs and cuts in state funding disproportionately hurt them more than wealthier urban/suburban districts.
Republicans thought that by giving teachers raises they could mollify a dissatisfied public. They missed the point. People want better schools, not just better paid teachers. They see paying teachers better as part of that formula but not the only part. They also want money in the classroom, not money in religious schools. And they want teachers and school personnel treated with respect, not like the enemy.
In North Carolina, respect for education is not just a political position, it’s a cultural norm. Missing that point comes with a political price. Republicans are about to pay it.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
“School Voucher” = Publicly Funded Private Education for the Wealthy Children of Greedy, Unconscionable Parents
um, wafranklin, how exactly did “It is only common sense” sell vouchers? The only people buying their sales pitch are the corporate “reformers” trying to break off a piece of that public funding pie for themselves. The rest of us don’t buy it. If you want to “fix” education, how about properly funding schools? How about letting us buy some of our first new textbooks in several years? How about making sure that students with learning disabilities have smaller class sizes for more one-on-one instruction from teachers, or a classroom with the assistance of a teacher assistant for struggling kids? How about not trying to dictate public education policy when they don’t understand the first thing about it?
Just because these legislators went to school many, many years ago does not mean they know what to do to make schools successful. If you could see how piss-poor the state-developed MSL tests are, you’d hang your head. The legislators decided that we teachers were crap-weasels, sitting around eating bon-bons all day, and if they could just develop a test for every subject, they could prove what we are really up to. But the tests are terribly written, statistically invalid pieces of garbage. Kids who do really well in class cry after the test, saying “I’ve never seen half of that stuff!” That’s because a chunk of it wasn’t even on the curriculum, or it was, but the questions were so poorly written that the kids didn’t recognize what they were talking about. Oh, and how about how they were going to create “meaningful” tests, not just multiple-choice, rote-memorization tests, and the very next year, they took the essays and performance questions off the test and left us with… you guessed it…. multiple-choice, rote-memorization tests.
We teachers really do know what we are doing, we really are dedicated to our jobs and our students, and we just want the legislature to stop treating us like the enemy. I am so sorry I moved here. I loved this state so much… I so looked forward to coming here, but now I just feel like it was a huge mistake.
No one I know has missed those very misleading GOP bullet points and euphemisms, as they have been constantly lobbed at the electorate via GOP news quotes and campaign literature. And, BTW, you might not want to criticize the clarity of politicsnc.com blogs or their follow-up comments when your own post was not especially clear, direct, and to the point.
Well, you all missed the point that their strategy on vouchers has become “saving the poor, giving them a “real choice””. Just like you missed their selling point on vouchers, which was: “It is only common sense” – which did more to sell vouchers. I just treat it as a commentary on the quality of the NC “moderate” political commentariat, which constantly confuses others and themselves.
The only thing really broken is the Republican approach to education. What they seek is racial re-segregation, under the cover of ‘parental choice.’
Vexing how every GOP candidate is now trying their best to portray themselves as champions of education in NC in their campaign materials. Largest teacher pay raise of all time. Fighting for smaller class sizes, for more “opportunities” via charter schools and private school vouchers…yadda, yadda yadda.
Fact is they’ve not invested in and supported our K-12 public schools any way near how they want people to believe. While making snide comments that reflect poorly on our public schools, and on our teachers as ungrateful and lazy, they have offered our most experienced teachers a pittance of a raise, and re-routed public funds (that could have helped every school and every student in our traditional school system) toward exclusive charter schools and private schools.
They have cut teaching assistantships, tried to end career/tenure status job protections, and thwarted Wake County’s attempt to have its voters decide the raise sales taxes for educational purposes.
Sure, the GOP is “all about public education.” All about its starvation and unraveling, that is……
And they attack teachers for daring to speak out against it.