Shrugging off the evidence of the assault on public schools

Published March 12, 2013

By Chris Fitzsimon

by Chris Fitzsimon

You can argue that the most revealing moments of this shockingly regressive legislative session have come in the last two weeks.

And I am not talking about the mean-spirited decision by legislative leaders and Governor Pat McCrory to slash unemployment benefits and deny 170,000 laid off workers emergency help from the federal government while they continue their desperate search for a job.

And it wasn’t the absurd passage of a bill to deny health care to 500,000 low-income people by refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

It wasn’t even the decision by the House and Senate not to extend the state Earned Income Tax Credit that helps almost a million low-wage workers and their families make ends meet.

All those decisions to punish and demonize the poor in service of a reactionary tea party agenda were sadly as predictable as they were offensive when you consider the ideology of the folks currently in control in Raleigh.

The surprise of the session came last week when the State Board of Education heard a report about teacher salaries that showed North Carolina now ranks 46th in how much we pay our teachers, behind even South Carolina.

A starting teacher must work 15 years before earning a $40,000 salary. Teacher pay in a state allegedly committed to quality public education is simply a scandal.

The teacher pay numbers came out a few days after a report from the NEA that showed North Carolina had fallen to 48th in the country in per-pupil expenditures in public education.

The NEA ranking is the one cited by Republican legislators and some conservative groups last year to show the budget cuts in 2011 didn’t cause a precipitous drop in the state’s education spending relative to other states.

They haven’t said much about this year’s NEA spending rankings that take into account the last two years of slashing budgets by the majorities that assumed control of the House and Senate in the 2010 election.

What’s most shocking about the numbers is the lack of response they have provoked in the legislative halls and beyond.

The news that we ranked 48th in spending actually came during “Education Week” in the House, when Speaker Thom Tillis held public question and answer sessions with superintendents, principals, and teachers.

The sessions garnered significant media coverage and the funding rankings were mentioned a few times but didn’t create much of a stir.

Instead we heard from House leaders that despite vocal opposition from the educators who came to Raleigh, they will be pushing a version of a voucher scheme this year, which would drain even more resources from public schools and the students and families who rely on them.

North Carolina is now virtually last in the county in how much we invest in educating our kids and how much we pay the teachers who we demand work harder and harder to improve student achievement.

The massive disinvestment that brings bigger classes, fewer teacher assistants, textbook shortages and lack of classroom supplies comes as high school graduation rates have reached an all-time high.

Teachers have miraculously been doing more with less, to quote a popular Republican talking point. And as a reward, they are getting even less to do more with.

Governor Pat McCrory said many times during his campaign for that public education was broken in North Carolina. That’s ridiculous.

What’s broken is the state’s commitment to public schools. The latest funding studies make that undeniably clear.

And so the session rolls on with the evidence of the dismantling of public schools just another footnote in this push of North Carolina to the far right.

The war on the poor seems to have anesthetized us somehow to the parallel assault on public education that used to be our consensus priority in North Carolina. It’s clearly not any more, not with this crowd in charge.

Chris Fitzsimon is Director of NC Policy Watch and an NC Spin Panelist

 

March 12, 2013 at 1:50 pm
Tom Hauck says:

I strongly disagree with the often repeated comment that North Carolina does not pay enough money to be well educated and thus until we give more money to the education establishment we will remain dumb. When we give more money to the establishment they misuse it, in my opinion.

For example, if you compare the NC State Summary of Public School Full-time Personnel 2000-2001 with the same data for 2008-2009 (latest available) you will note that Total teachers, Assistant Principals, Teaching and Teacher Assistants increased 16.2% from 93,850 to 109,026. All other full time personnel in the Summary from Officials, Administrators, and Managers to Laborers, Unskilled increased 19.8% from 29,850 to 35,767. During this same period the students increased 15.1% from 1,282,576 to 1,476,566.

I can understand that the teachers would increase more quickly than students in order to reduce the teacher student ratio. But in the nonteaching category, increases of 86% for Unskilled Laborers, 84% for Technicians, and 79% for Consultant, Supervisor are harder to justify, in my opinion.

Thus, if personnel had increased at the same rate as students (15.1%) we would have 1000 fewer teacher positions and 1,400 fewer non-teaching positions or, at an average of $35,000 per year, $84 million left over.

Check it yourself at the excellent website http://www.ncpublicschools.org/

March 12, 2013 at 1:52 pm
Tom Hauck says:

I strongly disagree with the often repeated comment that North Carolina does not pay enough money to be well educated and thus until we give more money to the education establishment we will remain dumb.

When we give more money to the establishment they misuse it, in my opinion.

For example, if you compare the NC State Summary of Public School Full-time Personnel 2000-2001 with the same data for 2008-2009 (latest available) you will note that Total teachers, Assistant Principals, Teaching and Teacher Assistants increased 16.2% from 93,850 to 109,026. All other full time personnel in the Summary from Officials, Administrators, and Managers to Laborers, Unskilled increased 19.8% from 29,850 to 35,767. During this same period the students increased 15.1% from 1,282,576 to 1,476,566.

I can understand that the teachers would grow faster than students in order to reduce the teacher student ratio. But in the nonteaching category, increases of 86% for Unskilled Laborers, 84% for Technicians, and 79% for Consultant, Supervisor are harder to justify, in my opinion.

Thus, if personnel had increased at the same rate as students (15.1%) we would have 1000 fewer teacher positions and 1,400 fewer non-teaching positions or, at an average of $35,000 per year, $84 million left over.

Check it yourself at the excellent website http://www.ncpublicschools.org/

March 13, 2013 at 9:01 am
djofraleigh says:

The NCAE bet on the wrong horse in the last election, or didn't work hard enough to get Democrats reelected. Now they reap what they've sown.

Being ranked so low in teacher pay makes it hard to find the silver lining, but I guess it would be 'thank the Lord for Louisiana and Mississippi (if they are the two lower states).

I'm curious, in comparing states by testing (where possible) where does NC stand in getting the most bang for the buck? Utah ranks high there, but very low in pay.

March 13, 2013 at 9:10 am
djofraleigh says:

"Assault on the public schools" for a title line is harsh. Newtown comes to mine. Maybe another word would be better.

Also, to be fair, seems to me that Teacher pay was not increased in 2009 when the Dems were in power. Education is the biggest part of NC's budget and the hardest hit when cuts in revenue and spending happen. Medicaid has increased, it seems, at the expense of other programs, but what can you do if people are in need medically?

And, the devil's advocate would say that if we doubled teacher pay today, tomorrow we would be getting the same teachers teaching the same stuff the same way to the same students, and scores would not double.