For years, when Democrats controlled the legislature, Republicans criticized education spending as nothing more than building an education bureaucracy. They said they wanted to put more money directly into the classrooms. Now that Republicans are controlling the budget, we know they were just blowing smoke.
In reality, public education is not much of a priority for the GOP, even though it’s a top priority of voters. Quite clearly, their top priority is cutting taxes for business and the rich and the rest of their agenda is built around funding that. They only started caring about public schools when the outcry got loud enough and their polling showed it a liability.
Last session, when they were even more full of piss and vinegar than they are now, Republicans ridiculed teachers and blamed them for our education woes. One convoluted story line went that Democrats never fully funded education and they denied teachers raises so, somehow, everybody should be fine with the GOP making deeper cuts. What was obvious then and is even more obvious now is that Republicans don’t really have a plan for public education. They are just making decisions on the fly to satisfy their wing nut factions and to keep the tax cuts for their wealthy benefactors.
When the GOP enacted the voucher system, they were playing mainly to their religious base that wants the public to subsidize their fundamentalist private schools so we can raise a generation of children who believe dinosaurs lived with humans. Their move last week to end Common Core was less about implementing any reliable standards than it was about holding on to the Greg Brannon wing of the party that thinks Common Core is a plot by Obama to indoctrinate our kids. And Phil Berger’s argument that eliminating teacher assistants is backed up by research is just cherry-picking data to justify a bad bill instead of letting research drive public policy.
It’s clear that the GOP has no comprehensive education policy. Instead, they’ve passed a mishmash of legislation designed to appeal to their base and spend as little as possible. Their priorities are clear: 1) fund tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations; 2) mollify their right wing base; 3) keep the general public off their backs by appearing to give a damn about public schools by offering teachers raises while slashing resources in the classroom.
All of their goals are politically motivated, not policy driven. The losers here are our kids.
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 >
Putting the longevity pay into the raise is despicable – taking away something that teachers have already earned to give them something that they should have already gotten – go figure????? No such thing as a pay raise – just playing catch up for back pay for the pay steps that have been frozen – and then it will be flat. So misleading. Trying their best to dismantle public education – which most of them wouldn’t be where they are without it.
If I may add one more tidbit to this line of thought, but first, a caveat. Nothing of what I’m about to address has been personally verified by me, but in the midst of a rather spirited conversation last week, the details came forth and the content and extent of them are such that I saw no need, thus, my comments are based entirely on the veracity of that conversation.
I learned that Driver Education is not being funded in addition to the other things that are likewise being exorcised from the budget. Which is rather odd when you then take into consideration that this segment of the education budget (driver training) is supposed to be funded by a fee of three dollars paid by each licensed driver in North Carolina when they are issued a license. Now, if that money is not going to be used the purpose it has been so designated, then where is it going? I’m pretty sure that DMV has not quit collecting that fee nor will cease to collect it.
Driver education has a revenue stream. That money should be spent as it is intended; to fund driver education. No one seems to be able to grasp the importance of something until it affects them personally and by the time the importance is recognized, it is usually too late for someone else.
When are we going to punish Red areas of the state that keep harming us all? One way to split their coalition is for the democrats to threaten taxes targeted at specific areas of the state blindly voting for these idiots over and over again.
if you want to make a conservative sit up and pay attention, threaten their wallet.
You hit it square on, Thomas. The facts surrounding GOP support—or lack thereof—of public education in NC are clear. As the majority party, they failed to address low teacher salary issues in 2011, 2012 or 2013. Rather, GOP leaders badmouthed teachers, cut teaching assistantships, ended the graduate degree salary enhancement program, and advanced charter schools and private school funding/enrollment. This year, in the face of public outcry, an embarrassing national ranking of NC’s teacher pay, and a rush of teachers leaving the system/state, the GOP finally relented and offered a pay raise. But they held teacher tenure protections as hostage, and underwrote that raise by further cuts to education, i.e., further cutting of teaching assistants and textbook support.
The GOP doesn’t understand or appreciate public K-12 education in NC, and they have no plan for it, other than to starve it slowly and make classroom teaching more challenging to educators. They clearly are more focused on expanding funding for charter/private schools, so that the better-off folk have more convenient, more controllable, and more tax-payer subsidized school options for their kids.