The next crisis
Published March 9, 2014
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, March 9, 2014.
Gov. Pat McCrory is coming around on coal ash ponds. Unfortunately, it took a major spill into the Dan River to demonstrate the problem and prompt him to call for safer storage.
Last week, the governor acknowledged a different sort of crisis: a looming deadline for local school boards to identify their best 25 percent of teachers and reward them with four-year contracts, if the educators give up their tenure rights.
At an education event in Chapel Hill, McCrory said he would seek changes in the implementation of the compensation program. “I think it’s an example of passing the policy without clearly understanding the execution,” he said in a significant understatement.
The governor was critical last year that the legislature stuffed major changes in education policy into the state budget where they were scarcely examined or discussed. But he signed the budget without asking for these controversial provisions to be removed and given the separate consideration they deserved.
Only afterward have they gotten close scrutiny. Not surprisingly, teachers and many local school boards don’t like them.
Last month, the Guilford County Board of Education unanimously voted to file a lawsuit to block implementation. The Durham school board last week voted to join the lawsuit.
“The 25 percent mandate is not about rewarding excellence in teaching,” Durham Chairwoman Heidi Carter said, according to WRAL. “It’s about coercing teachers to give up a right they’ve justly earned. And that’s a right to salary protection and a right to due process.”
School boards in Wake, Forsyth, Watauga, New Hanover and other counties have passed resolutions asking the legislature to rescind the policy. The uprising signals strong opposition by locally elected education leaders to an ill-considered action.
The governor insisted “the intent of the rule is very good.” That’s arguable, because it’s difficult to separate intent from implementation. There is no established process to determine which 25 percent of teachers should be favored with compounded annual bonuses of $500. The school board in Guilford County could use one method and the board in Rockingham County another. But using 2013-14 student achievement data won’t be possible. Boards are required to make their teacher selections by June 30 — before final scores on state tests are in.
If the legislature really intended to recognize and reward North Carolina’s best teachers, it would have established a fair way of determining who those teachers are. And where does the 25 percent figure come from, anyway? It’s arbitrary.
The governor ought to do a lot more than seek clarification of the process during the legislative session that opens in May. He should ask the legislature to grant a delay and agree to reconsider the whole scheme. If it means to strengthen the teaching profession, it will need a better approach than designating three-fourths of teachers from the get-go as not good enough to get bonuses. It also should withdraw the insulting offer of extra money for some teachers if they surrender the career status they’ve already earned.
Otherwise, this will spill into another toxic political problem for the governor.
March 9, 2014 at 4:25 pm
Tom Hauck says:
Why do we ignore the fact that 85% of Blacks, 82% of ED or Poor, 80% of Hispanics, 68% of All the children, 56% of Whites, 50% of NED or Not Poor FAILED one or two of the 2013 North Carolina End-of-Grade tests?
I do not blame the teachers but for some reason the children do not seem to be learning.
For that information go to the North Carolina Schools website at www.ncreportcards.org and look at the latest test results.
