NC Teacher Pay Task Force Recommends Pay Increases for Beginning Teachers & Merit Pay

The North Carolina Legislative Task Force concluded its series of meetings to study teacher pay in North Carolina, and here’s their recommendations in a nutshell:

• Raise beginning teacher pay and not raise the pay of any other teachers.
• Future raises for any teachers should be performance-based or merit pay tied to test scores.
• The General Assembly should direct the North Carolina State Board of Education to study educator compensation models and submit recommendations to the General Assembly AFTER this fall’s legislative elections.

That’s it. Those are the recommendations of this so-called Task Force. While they might have buried these exact recommendations in tons of verbiage, these basically do the following:

• Endorse Governor Pat McCrory’s plans to only raise pay for beginning teachers. (Why am I not surprised that this Task Force turned into a rubber-stamp committee of the McCrory administration and our current legislative leaders?)
• Recommend that the state adopt some kind of merit pay scheme, even though that’s been tried and proven to not work multiple times. It has been even tried in North Carolina. (Again, considering the state of our North Carolina Legislature, I am not surprised at all they basically endorsed plans put forth by the American Legislative Exchange Council and many others who see merit pay as the salvation for everything.)
• Finally, recommend another study, this time by passing the buck the North Carolina State Board of Education. Of course this passing the buck was by design due to their own earlier law. Isn't it really interesting though that the State Board of Education is to REPORT BACK AFTER THE NOVEMBER ELECTIONS this fall? You can certainly read much into that move!

There’s absolutely nothing in their findings that wasn't out there and already being discussed. Meanwhile, North Carolina is hemorrhaging teachers who are seeking greener pastures elsewhere, and there are so few teachers graduating from colleges to replace them. In addition, morale for teachers in this state has never been lower, and all our state leaders can do is study so that they can again study the studies? This is all due to a legislature, who at least judging by their actions and appearances, absolutely detest public education.

Some other interesting things coming out of this exercise in political pointlessness, were the comments made by some of the teachers on the task force.

“I’m struggling to understand why we were brought here.’' Teacher Timothy Barnsback stated. He also called the whole ordeal’s four meetings “Presentations and Propaganda.”

Johnson County History teacher Richard Nixon said the report ignores veteran teachers who have been frozen out of their contractual pay increases for six years. He stated, “I don’t recall anyone saying we should raise salaries for beginning teachers and leave the rest down the road.”

It is clear that our North Carolina Legislature continues to predictably be no friend to public education. After passing a slate of legislation all designed and directed toward dismantling the teaching profession, it isn't really surprising at all that nothing substantive comes out of this North Carolina Legislative Task Force on teacher pay. Our state political leaders have certainly remained steadfastly dedicated to their anti-public education agenda, and they are counting on kicking this "teacher pay can" down the road past this fall’s elections.

UPDATE: Read WRAL's article here "Teacher Pay Report Gets Chilly Reception" and also you can read the Legislative report here: "NC Educator Effectiveness and Compensation Task Force Report."

NC Senate Leader Releases His Plan for Education Reform

North Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger released his education reform plan today. The plan is called the Excellent Public Schools Act. Based on a quick read-through of the legislation and from Senator Berger's Web Site, here are the reforms outlined in that plan:

• Ending social promotion for 3rd graders who can't demonstrate they can read based on state adopted reading tests.
• Add "intensive reading instruction" for students struggling to read.
• Grade schools as A, B, C, D, or F based on test scores.
• Add a North Carolina Teacher Corps program, modeled after Teach for America, that would allow recent college graduates and mid-career professionals teach in low-performing schools.
• Pay teachers based on merit as determined by test scores?
• End teacher tenure and have teacher sign a contract for employment each year.
• Provide funding for the instructional days that the General Assembly added last year but did not fund.
• Allow state employees to volunteer in a public literacy program for up to five hours per month.

Here's some links for more information on this education reform plan.

Senator Phil Berger's Summary from His Election Web Site

Brochure from Senator Phil Berger's Election Web Site Site

Text from the Actual Legislation

I will comment more on this reform package after I have had time to look through the legislation.

Charlotte Observer Gets It Wrong: NC Budget Rewrite Won't Save Education Jobs

The article in the Charlotte Observer entitlted, "Budget Rewrite Saves Teacher Assistant Jobs", is a clear attempt by our political leaders in the North Carolina General Assembly to mask the truth of what their budget cuts are going to do to local school districts. What's even worse, the Charlotte Observer uses a headline that seems to support the idea that the North Carolina Legislature has somehow magically found funds to save 15,000 or so teacher assistant jobs. They haven't. What they have done is shifted the responsibility for making the job cuts back to the local school districts, which now have to find $429 million dollars to send back to the state out of their budgets. Our state legislature is playing the "discretionary cuts" game again, which translates into someone else having to do their dirty work. The public rarely knows or understands the discretionary cuts game.

Ann McColl, North Carolina State Board of Education lobbyist, calls it like it is when she says, "Some of the really tough decisions about positions and job losses are just being passed down to the local level." 

With the magnitude of cuts our legislature is asking of our schools, local districts will have no choice but cut positions, either teachers or teacher assistants. It seems some politicians still operate under the delusion that there's millions of dollars still being wasted in schools, but after three years of cutting, there's just not much there.


The sad part of all this, our legislators are doing this simply so they can respond in the next cycle, "I didn't cut any jobs."


Update: My partial apologies to the Charlotte Observer; they are only partially wrong. They got the misleading article and story from the Raleigh newspaper, News and Observer. Their headline on this budget reads "School Jobs Saved in State Budget."