Richardson education reform plan is on target

Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, April 26, 2017.

Billy Richardson is thinking big. The Democratic state representative from Fayetteville may actually be thinking bigger than is realistic, but he’s on the right track. Education in North Carolina needs to be much better than it is today. The education reform legislation that he has filed is the kind of medicine our public schools really need.

Richardson’s plan is expensive and may not have a prayer in a Republican-dominated legislature that is moving toward further cutting taxes, not increasing them. But what he proposes deserves thoughtful consideration anyway.

Richardson wants to give teachers and administrators big raises. By the fall of 2019, the pay for a starting teacher would rise to more than $51,000 under his plan, from the current $35,000. While lawmakers have given teachers — especially at the entry levels — raises in recent years, teacher pay in North Carolina is still in the country’s bottom 20 percent. That’s not nearly good enough and won’t help struggling school systems keep the best and brightest young teachers in the classroom. The continuing exodus of teachers to better-paying states needs to be halted and the only way to do it is with better paychecks.

The lawmaker also wants to expand pre-kindergarten education to include 3-year-olds. The program today starts when children are 4. Financial assistance for parents would be available year-round, not just during the school year. We hope legislative leaders don’t just dismiss this idea as a frill we can’t afford. It may be that we can’t afford not to do it. Just this week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York public schools will begin offering full-day preschool to all 3-year-olds. The program, which would serve about 62,000 children a year, is expected to cost at least $700 million. But research on early education is increasingly clear and unanimous: The earlier at-risk children begin learning, the less they’re likely to end up in jail, addicted or suffering from other problems that have enormous costs to society.

Richardson’s plan would also restore the North Carolina Teaching Fellows program, which once paid the university tuition for future teachers if they taught in North Carolina after graduation. It would provide full-time mentors for teachers during their first two years in the classroom. It would pay for educational sabbaticals too.

None of this is cheap. Richardson proposes small increases in the state’s sales and personal income taxes. “It’s expensive,” Richardson acknowledges. “But what a nation or a state values, it cultivates.”

In the past, this state has focused well on creating an excellent education system. Our teacher salaries ranked in the middle of the states, even though our cost of living is comparatively low. This brought great teachers to our schools. At the same time, the state also created one of the nation’s top public university systems. But in recent years — especially during and after the recession — that commitment retreated and our government leaders haven’t moved to aggressively restore funding.

With his education reform plan, Richardson is looking ahead a generation or two, introducing measures that can improve the quality of life and ease some of our most persistent social problems. We hope the General Assembly’s leadership can look beyond the next election and see the value of these ideas.

http://www.fayobserver.com/opinion/20170426/our-viewrichardson-education-reform-plan-is-on-target