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During the 2012 North Carolina gubernatorial campaign, former Charlotte mayor and Republican candidate Pat McCrory ran on several platforms in which he promised to “help turn North Carolina around.” The state had been suffering from tough financial times, among other issues.
One that McCrory mentioned prominently was the poor education system in the state.
“I have a passion for education. We will never be satisfied until we transform our public schools into centers of excellence,” McCrory said, as quoted on his website. “We cannot achieve excellence by simply spending more money on a broken system. We must make major reforms. Our primary goal must be to empower students to grasp control of their adult lives by providing them with the necessary skill set to get a job.”
He was elected in November 2012 and, with a GOP majority in the General Assembly, helped get across a new education budget, proposed in July. Backlash poured out from Democratic sources, claiming the budget harmed public education, teachers and students, while Republicans said they were doing more to help families and students succeed.
What the legislation means
The new state budget passed by the North Carolina General Assembly in July of 2013 saw sweeping changes to the public education system.
The budget included no raises in teacher salary but does give teachers and other state employees five additional days of paid leave for the year. Local districts have the option to supplement teacher pay, although there are no “step” raises for teachers based on years of experience.
Mark Jewell, vice president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, said teachers have been expressing dismay about the education changes.
“They are outraged that the profession they love so much is being picked apart,” Jewell said. “They feel extremely disrespected.”
Reduction in funding for teacher assistants is the most significant cut at $120 million, a 21 percent decrease in funding. This could lead to the elimination of up to 3,850 positions across the state.
Additional pay for advanced degrees is being phased out, removing incentives for teachers to pursue a master’s degree or other higher education. Teachers must complete an advanced degree prior to the 2014-2015 school year to keep the advanced degree salary supplement.
Tenure for teachers, formerly known as career status, is also being phased out and replaced by contracts. Historically, teachers in North Carolina received tenure or career status after working for four years. Critics of the policy say it prevents bad teachers from being fired, but those that support tenure say it keeps good teachers from being fired unfairly. Under the new budget, tenure will be completely phased out by 2018.
Olivia Oxendine, a member of the North Carolina State Board of Education, said tenure has not served its purpose since it was installed in the state.
“The time was right to remove tenure,” Oxendine said. “It’s painful now, but 10 years from now people will look back and say it was a good thing.”
Starting in 2018, teachers will be offered one- to four- year contracts that are renewed based on performance. School boards are also required to offer $5,000 raises with four-year contracts to 25 percent of teachers in their district who have taught in the district throughout the last three years. The new policies are meant to reward the top-performing teachers in the state, but critics say it removes job security and discourages recruiting to the state.
“Offering teachers a contract is divisive and it doesn’t promote longevity,” Jewell said. “We need to reward all teachers through pay raises to bring us up to the national average.”
The budget provides funding for students’ fees for advanced placement (AP), international baccalaureate (IB) and career and technical education exams. The state will pay those fees, regardless of the student’s score on the exam.
Funding is being increased for low-income families by offering them $4,200 “opportunity scholarships” to help pay for a child to go to private school. Children with disabilities can receive up to $6,000 for private education. Free pre-K classes are being offered to 2,500 4-year-olds as part of a $12.5 million addition to the budget.
Some educators have voiced concern that scholarships going toward private education have no transparency as to how that money will be used.
“There’s no oversight or accountability with private education. Public dollars are for public schools,” Jewell said.
Oxendine said she supports the vouchers for private education because “parents and families deserve choices.”
“Vouchers take away from public education, but it’s a very small percentage,” Oxendine said.
More money is also being allocated for technology in schools, with $12 million of lottery money going toward classroom technology.
Development of the new budget
Both Democrats and Republicans in the North Carolina General Assembly have been responsible for the gradual slide in teacher salary since the recession started in 2008. When Democrats controlled the legislature and the governor’s office that same year, teacher pay was frozen and teacher bonuses for high test scores were taken away. In 2008, North Carolina was ranked 25th in the nation for average teacher pay, according to the National Education Association.
When Republicans gained a majority of the legislature in 2011, a 1.2 percent raise was given to teachers and other state employees, but none was given in 2012. A new teacher now goes five years without receiving a raise.
Republicans blame rising Medicaid costs for not providing raises for teachers and other state employees this fiscal year. Throughout the next two years, $1.4 billion of the budget will be spent on Medicaid services.
Phil Berger, president pro tempore of the North Carolina Senate and one of the biggest proponents of the legislation, declined to answer questions for this article through his office and directed all inquiries to an op-ed he wrote for the News & Observer.
In the piece, he wrote that public education was not about “spending money” or “growing bureaucracy or guaranteeing employment and generous benefits regardless of performance.”
“We believe it’s about teaching our children and empowering them to be productive, successful members of society,” Berger wrote. “Last fall, voters overwhelmingly re-elected a Republican legislature to strengthen our schools so students succeed. And that’s a responsibility we take seriously.”
Negative reactions
As soon as the budget was announced, the criticisms began to flow in from all sides. Democrats were especially frustrated.
“For the first time in my career of more than 30 years in public education, I am truly worried about students in our care,” June Atkinson, North Carolina’s state schools superintendent and a Democrat, told the Associated Press. “I am disappointed for the children in our state who will have fewer educators and resources in their schools as a result of the General Assembly’s budget.”
In August, the North Carolina Democratic Party put advertisements in newspapers across North Carolina to criticize the cuts enacted by Republicans.
“We wanted to lay out plainly the negative effects of Gov. McCrory and Republican legislators turning their backs on public education in our state,” Micah Beasley, a spokesman for the N.C. Democratic Party, told The Technician. “From increased classroom sizes to aging textbooks and dwindling supplies, these cuts are felt profoundly from pre-K all the way up to our public universities. Voters need to know this and they need to understand it.”
The advertisement claimed that “Republican leadership has failed teachers in North Carolina,” citing six different ways in which the budget failed teachers. The ad finished by encouraging readers to “tell” Republican leaders, including Gov. McCrory, to “study up on the 3 R’s: Raises, Resources and Respect!”
Negative response to the budget was bipartisan. Ann Goodnight, a member of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors and a Republican, wrote a letter to the editor of the News & Observer that called the budget a “grievous mistake.”
“We need aggressive action to improve education across our state,” Goodnight wrote. “What we have is worse than inaction: It is harmful action. The only winners will be places that are investing in education and using the playbook we once embraced.”
Thomas Ross, president of the UNC school system that includes institutions in Chapel Hill, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Wilmington, also expressed concern about what the budget meant for his schools.
“I worry about the impact additional reductions will have on our ability to provide high-quality educational opportunities to our residents and to assist in North Carolina’s economic recovery,” he said in a statement when the budget proposal was released in March.
There hasn’t been much positive public reaction to the budget passed and initiatives enacted. An Elon Poll released in September showed that four out of five registered voters in North Carolina believed teachers were paid too little, and 53 percent of responders supported teacher tenure.
Berger claimed “dishonest” opponents of the budget cared more about money than about the students.
“There are some dishonest but powerful special interests in Raleigh who are forgetting what our public schools are all about,” he wrote. “Instead of focusing on the kids, they’re focusing on one thing: money for their union members. The way they talk, you’d think North Carolina schools are not going to open this year because there is no money and all the teachers have been fired.”
Berger wrote that the purpose of the budget was to help make schools in North Carolina better, not cut teachers or funding. He wrote that the budget actually allocated the most money on K-12 public education in state history.
The N.C. GOP’s website features an entire page on “the facts” on state education spending. The page offers answers to “some of the liberal left’s most outrageous claims.”
“It’s shameful how the hyper-partisan teachers' union — the largest and most organized group of paid lobbyists in the state — and their mouthpieces in the media continue to scare hard-working teachers and parents with wild claims that never seem to materialize,” the page says.
Educators came out in force in response to the budget. Protests called “Moral Mondays” began in April about the cuts. Teachers began wearing red in the “Red4EdNC” campaign in order to bring awareness to the situation. A walk-out was proposed, but it later changed into a “walk-in.” Educators wearing red gathered at the doors of their schools to walk in together in a show of support for one another in light of the budget. The event took place Nov. 4.
“The minute we heard about the walk-in, it just took off because that really signified what we’re all interested in, which is bringing all of us together to fight this together,” Morghean McPhail, a fifth-grade teacher at E.K. Powe Elementary School in Durham, said to WNCN.
Atkinson said she thought the protests and walk-ins were a “positive” step.
“We have about 80 percent of North Carolinians not having children. So people who are not involved get their view of education of what they see in the news, see on television,” she said. “We need to have our doors open so that people can see what happens. I thought it was very positive for teachers to take time to be there after school is out or before school starts [for parents] to see what teachers are doing in our schools.”
In his op-ed’s conclusion, Berger said the budget was all about helping students have the best education.
“Change isn’t always easy,” he wrote. “But it’s time to embrace this opportunity to empower our children to reach their full potential.”
Atkinson was not shy about pointing out the problems with the budget.
“I saw the budget as under-investing in public schools in our state,” she said. “Under-investing has long-term consequences. The loss of experienced teachers, the loss of new teachers going to other states, the loss of teachers who would want to move to North Carolina to teach, smaller enrollments in our teacher preparation programs across the state, the increase in class size.”
Despite these “long-term consequences,” Atkinson said she still has hope things can change for the better in North Carolina public schools.
“I certainly will continue to promote public schools, to use any forum that I can to say that we are under-investing in public education and say that we need a raise, and [teachers] need a raise because our students need to be invested in,” she said. “I’m the eternal optimist and believe that we need to continue to persuade that we need to invest in public education.” [/tab]
[tab title="Future Educators"]
Future Educators
Written and produced by Courtney DavisIn 1986, the North Carolina General Assembly created the North Carolina Teaching Fellows program to help fix the teaching shortage. Since it began, it has awarded scholarships to 500 North Carolina residents each year to help pay for the students' college education. In order to receive the scholarship, the student signs a legally binding contract that says the state will give them a scholarship and after graduation, the student will teach in a North Carolina public school for four years.
Unfortunately, the Teaching Fellows program was cut due to budget issues in 2011, even though all college students who were part of the Fellows program at the time were grandfathered in. Now, college students are faced with the issue that they must work in North Carolina for four years, even though recent legislation is making teaching harder and harder to continue as a sole profession. The only other option, aside from teaching in North Carolina for four years, is to leave the state and pay back the loan and any interest. [/tab]
[tab title="Master's Degrees"]
Master’s degrees no longer a salary booster
Written by Chelsey Stark, Graphics by Kristen CaseNorth Carolina is the most recent state to adopt legislation bearing more weight on teacher performance rather than diplomas. Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Tennessee and Newark, N.J., have adopted new salary scales not linked to advanced degrees.
Teachers who complete a master’s degree by the ambiguous date of Spring 2014 will be grandfathered into the 10 percent pay hike, but all others in the middle of pursuing advanced degrees will be cut off.
However, legislators didn’t dismantle the 12 percent supplement for those who have earned National Board Certification, which is based on high standards that evaluate teaching practice through performance-based assessments.
John Pardini, U.S. history teacher at Western Alamance High School, said he finds this system to be detrimental to real teaching.
“It’s very hard to gauge what you define as results,” he says, “I didn’t get into teaching to regurgitate 40 different things that the state wants the students to know, and that’s it. I got into teaching to mold better minds.”
Pardini said he believes improvement is about development. A student who can’t pass a test doesn’t mean that they haven’t grown, he said. It’s an odd profession that makes it very difficult to define growth.
Pardini has completed his master’s degree in science and teaching of adolescents of grade levels six through 12 in social studies at Fordham University in 2010, easily qualifying for the 10 percent pay hike in North Carolina.
“I graduated undergrad with a history degree so I needed to get a degree that allowed me to teach in New York,” Pardini said. “And a master’s was preferred.”
Several states require, or eventually require, a master’s degree to obtain any kind of teaching license, while North Carolina is forcing teachers to reconsider the cost benefits of higher learning.
For in-state students, a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) at North Carolina State University costs around $12,000 per semester. The same program at the University of North Carolina costs $5,624 per semester.
Elon University's Master of Education program, offered across three summers, costs a total of $9,800.
North Carolina’s current teaching certification requirements include a graduation from a bachelor’s degree program, completion of a state-approved teacher education program and meeting the federal requirements to be designated as “highly qualified.”
Keith Cooper, BC calculus teacher at Chapel Hill High School, said he knows there are a lot of variables that go into good teaching.
“By itself, [a master’s degree] doesn’t make you a better teacher,” Cooper said. “But I do think that it gives you more experience and has the potential to end up making better teachers.”
Cooper has 20 years of experience teaching in North Carolina and got his master’s degree in teaching mathematics.
Both teachers admit to wanting the increased pay scale, but their drive to get an advanced degree was more entrenched in the desire to have a stronger foundation in their respective fields to benefit the students.
“You’re always trying to advance your professional standing,” Pardini said. “But I don’t see how the new system gives teachers any incentives to want to increase their education ability.”
In May 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics submitted the annual mean wage of secondary school teachers across all states to round out to $57,770. North Carolina’s annual mean wage of secondary school teachers only reached $44,400.
However, none of these figures account for level of education.
“You’re going to say that all the states around North Carolina will pay more, period,” Cooper said. “But that they’ll also pay more for a master’s degree and this state won't? It’s like saying, 'Please go to another state.'”
Olivia Mackey, a senior at Elon, is planning on pursuing a master’s in physical education and health, but her path is leading her outside of the state.
"If I wasn’t wanting to teach in North Carolina before, I’m definitely not wanting to stay now," Mackey said.
Mackey said she expects the state to become a teacher repellant.
“I think people in the middle of completing their higher education will consider leaving, just as I did,” she said.
The number of North Carolina teachers holding master’s degrees has seen an overall decline since 2000, going from 33.1 percent to 28.1 percent of all classroom educators achieving higher licenses. Teachers holding doctorates and sixth-year level licenses have also decreased overall since that time.
[tab title="Local Teachers"]
Elon graduate speaks out about budget cuts
Written and produced by Lindsey SchmidtFor teachers, helping children is paramount to the job. Amy Hardison, a middle school teacher at Woodlawn Middle School in Mebane and an Elon University graduate, recognized she wanted to do that while she was in school.
“I always just wanted to help people, and the people I always wanted to help most are kids,” Hardison said.
Sitting in Company Shops Market with her 2-year-old daughter, Haley, Hardison says she remembers how coming to Elon was a “culture shock,” but her experiences at Elon prepared her well for working in education.
“I was in a classroom sophomore year,” Hardison said. “So that was really early, and I think being in the classroom earlier, I had more time to figure things out and make sure this is what I wanted to do, and I also had time to get the hang of it.”
Hardison participated in several practicums - one in a fourth-grade class, and another in a kindergarten class. She also studied abroad in London, giving her the opportunity to see what education was like in another country.
“Just all the different experiences in the classroom was the best preparation I could have gotten,” Hardison said.
Hardison said her favorite thing about teaching is the relationships she forms with her kids. She said she would be a “happy camper” if she could just focus on working with the students and teaching all the time.
But like every profession, teaching has its ups and downs. Hardison said for her, the most challenging part of being a teacher is all the administrative work that goes along with the job. She also mentioned other challenges, including new laws and programs being implemented every year.
With North Carolina passing legislation eliminating teacher assistants and maximizing class sizes, Hardison’s job only gets harder.
“The people passing laws, I wish they would just come into the classrooms. They have no idea what they’re doing to the kids,” Hardison said.
Hardison said in her grade level, they are sitting about 30 children in a classroom. And with 52-minute classes, Hardison expressed her frustration in not being able to do activities with the students she wants to.
“I can sit there and preach at them all day, but that’s not going to engage them, and I don’t want to do that,” Hardison said. “But you’ve got 30 kids in a room and 52 minutes to teach. Something’s gotta give.”
With the elimination of the master’s degree pay supplement, Hardison said it has deterred her from going back to school, especially when the price of education is so expensive and she has a family to support.
“It is [really] frustrating, especially when you get married and you have kids and you’re starting a family,” Hardison said, gesturing to Haley. “It’s my God-given right to start a family, and I’d like to be able to support that family.”
Erin Hone, an adjunct instructor of education at Elon and a former elementary school teacher, said when giving advice to her students who are going to be teachers in North Carolina, it is important they remember why they decided to become teachers, and the education of the kids is the most important part of the job.
“No matter what’s going on in the world and the state and the county as far as the legislation goes, ultimately, there’s no excuse for letting those children fall behind or not giving them the most quality of education,” Hone said.
Even though there is a cloud of negativity surrounding education today, Hone encourages those who feel a calling and passion to teach to jump into the profession. It will make a world of difference to the students, she said.
“It’s going to change their lives to have teachers who really care,” Hone said. “And that stems from teachers who are passionate about being in the classroom.”
Hone felt the calling to be a teacher early in her education. She said her mom saved a journal entry from when she was in the third grade, in which she wrote about how she wanted to be a teacher all because of her third-grade teacher. She drew inspiration from great teachers she had during her education and teachers who were not so good that she used as an influence for improvement.
It was a family decision for Hone to make the switch from teaching in elementary schools to preparing college students to work in the classroom. Hone worked in Guilford County and communicated regularly with professors at Elon and worked with students who were interning at her school. She said along with teaching, she also had a passion for mentoring.
“I still get to work with teachers I used to work with in the classroom,” Hone said. “But I’m also getting to be at home a little bit more, but at the same time, planning lessons and doing the stuff that I loved about teaching.”
In terms of what they think needs to be changed in education today, both Hone and Hardison agreed education needs to become a priority.
Hardison said teachers cannot keep getting pulled out of the classroom. She said that if she could make any changes to the education system, she would create more teaching positions and put less students in one classroom.
More teaching positions would require more funding, and Hone said it seems with the system right now, funds are being allocated to many different places. But funds are not going where they need to go in education, she said.
“I wish I could pull out of thin air more funding for more resources and more help for those teachers in the classroom,” Hone said.
Despite the negative changes and perceptions of education today, Hone said there is a positive change coming out of everything. Hone said Elon students are at an advantage because they are going into the professional world with this new mindset.
“Lately, there’s been a lot of emphasis on student growth, it used to just be the end result,” Hone said. “I think the emphasis on student growth is a very good thing."
[tab title="Poverty & Education"]
North Carolina poverty, education closely intertwined
Written by Nicole Chadwick Interactive map by Nicole Chadwick, Graphic by Kristen CaseOne in four children in North Carolina lives below the poverty line, according to Spotlight on Poverty. The environmental factors for a child living in poverty can influence his or her educational opportunities and achievements in the future, according to a study by Poverty and U.S. Education.
“While education has been envisioned as the great equalizer, this promise has been more myth than reality,” said Bruce Baker, a professor at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education about his report, “Poverty and Education: Finding the Way Forward.” “Not only is the achievement gap between the poor and the non-poor twice as large as the achievement gap between black and white students, but tracked differences in the cognitive performances of students in every age group show substantial differences by income or poverty status. These differences undoubtedly contribute to the increasing stratification of who attends and graduates from college, limiting economic and social mobility and serving to perpetuate the gap between rich and poor.”
The federal war on poverty, proposed in 1964, defines the absolute poverty line as lacking the resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living or having insufficient income to provide the food, shelter and clothing needed to preserve health.
In the 1960s, Gov. Terry Sanford created programs to fight poverty in North Carolina. The programs operated for five years, creating projects in education, health, job training, housing and community development.
This operation was federally funded because of the rural Democratically-controlled legislature.
At the time, half of students in the state dropped out before graduating high school, and 25 percent of people in the state had a sixth-grade education or below.
The programs, which took effect during a growing economy, had lasting effects — encouraging students to graduate, changing the understanding of health in the state and improving job training opportunities.
But because the United States economy took a dive in the last decade, North Carolina is struggling to get back on its feet.
In the United States today, living in poverty is defined as a family of four living on a maximum of $23,550 a year, according to the Federal Census Bureau.
The odds of a child born in Alamance County moving to the top of the income ladder as an adult are 4.1 percent to 5 percent, according to the Equality of Opportunity Project.
The map below shows poverty rates in all the counties in North Carolina. The blue marker denotes less than 10 percent, the yellow, between 10 and 20 percent and the red, 20 percent and above.
And many children in North Carolina will not have the opportunity for the “American Dream” because they are growing up in poverty, according to the Pew Center on the States.
“A child's prospect of escaping poverty varies considerably by geography, suggesting where one grows up matters a great deal," the Pew Center reported. "In North Carolina, climbing the economic ladder is harder compared to the average American and Southeasterner, and there is great variation within the Tar Heel State, too.”
In 2012, 16.1 million children under the age of 18 lived in poverty, according to the University of North Carolina School of Law. The school credits this uneven recovery to job loss and replacement of lost jobs with low-wage work.
This impacts a child’s education because the priority becomes finding a next meal rather than doing homework.
In North Carolina, 702,000 children are on food stamps, and nearly 270,000 families are on the Women, Infants and Children supplemental nutrition program (WIC).
The debate continues about whether federal and state-led programs are working to improve the conditions. Unemployment benefits in North Carolina saved 1.7 million people from living in poverty this year, according to UNC Law. The food stamps program saved 4 million people. But many still struggle to get by. [/tab]
[tab title="Protests"]
Budget cuts spark protests across the state
Written and produced by Jeff Ackermann Graphics by Kristen CaseThe North Carolina General Assembly’s changes to public education this past summer are getting attention around the state in the form of protests.
According to the National Education Association, North Carolina ranks among the lowest in the nation for public education, and that’s why protestors are looking for the government to take action. The new 2013 budget for public schools eliminated supplemental pay for teachers with advanced degrees, reduced the number of teacher assistants and eliminated class-size limits. Job security is also a concern, with the new budget phasing out tenure.
The protests, more commonly titled “Moral Monday” protests, are organized by local citizens and are aimed against the Republican-controlled state legislature. Participants meet every Monday and enter the legislature building with signs and chants to share their voices. This term marks the first time in more than 150 years with a Republican majority in both the Senate and the House.
The protests surround several issues, including voting restrictions and abortion laws, but the current state of public education in North Carolina is one of the main concerns.
Arrests are becoming a consistent part of the Monday protests. According to the Civitas Institute, more than 900 protestors were arrested during the summer.
Police arrested Mark Chilton, the mayor of Carrboro, at a Moral Monday protest June 3, marking one of the first arrests of a political figure.
http://youtu.be/jKKxlwpjhVg
“I think the point of these protests are to bring some moral authority into question of opposing what the Tea Party legislature are doing right now to North Carolina,” Chilton said. “The protests are here to make people understand what is happening.”
Chilton said education reform stood out as one of the main issues people were concerned about at the protest, particularly North Carolina’s “assault on teachers."
“A lot of people are concerned we’re treating our teachers badly,” he said. “We’re eliminating some of the pay incentives, reducing the overall amount of spending per pupil on our public schools. It’s all just headed in a completely wrong direction.”
With months of consistent protests, there’s been no immediate response from the government on changing its decisions.
“My biggest fear is if we can’t overcome the supermajorities between now and 2020, then another redistricting process happens again in 2020,” Chilton said.
On Nov. 4, teachers across North Carolina marched and held sit-ins, marking one of the main protests against public education this year. Thousands of teachers from dozens of schools across the state organized a “walk-in,” wearing red and holding signs as part of a statewide fight to promote funding for public education.
According to the News & Observer, McCrory said teachers have “legitimate gripes,” but also said he didn’t know much about those particular protests to detect if they were inappropriate. He also said his administration is looking at teacher salaries and performance pay.
Alamance County held its first Moral Monday protest Oct. 28 in downtown Burlington, bringing people of all ages. Paige Host, a senior at Elon University, helped plan the protest and was surprised by the big turnout.
“The protestors’ passion was contagious,” Host said. “The people were speaking up about what they truly believed in, and that was refreshing to see.”
Hundreds of people filled Burlington’s amphitheater, Host said. Both local and state officials told the crowd to continue showing discontent with the current North Carolina government. Host said education was still one of the main concerns.
http://youtu.be/Aeq6AID46cQ
“Everyone who spoke touched on education and the effects the budget cut is having on the state,” Host said.
The protests have led to discussion in the state. Nearly 50 people attended the education town hall meeting Nov. 18 at Williams High School in Burlington, which was hosted by Public Schools First North Carolina. The meeting addressed the impact of budget cuts and changes to public education in the state.
“I think it’s an absolute disaster and I think it’s going to lead to a resegregation of schools,” said Barrett Brown, a member of the NAACP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlTXYvzpZdM
Protests are still going on every Monday. For students like Host who experienced the protests firsthand, she said they will continue in the upcoming months.
“These people are not stopping,” she said. “They’ll never lose their passion to get their voices heard.”