There are several state legislatures that are working hard to earn the "Worst Legislature in America" medal. Florida, where it's cool to use terminally ill children as political tools and their families as punching bags, has always been a strong contender. New York State staked its claim by taking the extraordinary measure of overruling local government because they didn't like its decision. Several states have worked to promote the teaching profession by stripping it of any professional trappings like decent pay and job security.
But when it comes to suck, North Carolina is a tough state to beat.
The legislature tried to make tenure go away entirely, but was frustrated to discover that they could not legally revoke tenure for people who already had it. But the wily legislators realized that they had a unique piece of leverage in a state where teachers' real-dollar wages have dropped every year for seven years.
The proposal is simple. NC teachers can have a raise, or they can have job security. They cannot have both.
They may have a raise. And who knows. Some day they might get another one. But they can also be fired for being too expensive. Or they can have job security, but Senate Leader Phil Berger warns that they will probably never see another raise again.
The message is as clear as it is simple:
North Carolina legislators do not want teaching to be a career in their state.
If you want to devote your career, your lifetime of work, to teaching, you cannot do it in North Carolina.
If you want to support a family, live like a grown-up, experience a lifetime of success teaching students, you cannot do it in North Carolina.
We often talk about how a state "destroys" or "ruins" teaching as a profession, but often that's a bit of exaggeration and what we really mean is that they make it very, very hard to stay in teaching. But North Carolina proposes to actually do it-- to actually make teaching untenable as a career for self-supporting grown-ups. This goes past disrespect; this is demolition.
There is no upside in this for North Carolina. None. There is no benefit for a state that drives the most qualified teachers away. There is no benefit for a state system that becomes the system of last resort (Motto: Come see us if nobody else will hire you for a real job). There is no plus in telling new job applicants, "We intend to screw you over as a matter of policy." There is no benefit to students being taught by teachers who are working three jobs to make ends meet ("Sorry, but I won't be grading your papers until I get a night off from Piggly Wiggly"). There is no benefit to school environments when a state tells students, "Nobody needs to treat teachers with respect." There is no benefit for a state to tell its young people, "Hey, if you want to be a teacher when you grow up, y'all are gonna need to get the hell out of here."
There's plenty of benefit for other folks, kind of like the benefit of having one less hungry family show up for buffet night at Pizza Hut. Virginia can continue its teacher recruitment program ("Hey teachers! We're not great, but we sure as hell aren't North Carolina"). And I suppose this makes North Carolina a perfect staging area for TFA bodies
My heart goes out to people in North Carolina. If it were the place I was born and bred, I would be sadder than words can say, sad that my own people wanted to trash our state, sad that they want to actively discourage good teachers from working there, sad that they had zero interest in trying to get the best possible system in place for their children. Hell, I'm not from NC and it still makes me pretty sad.
So kudos to you, NC legislature. Tomorrow may bring new assaults on education from a different assortment of political twits, but for today, you are, in fact, the worst legislature in all of America.
Thank you for describing the situation so clearly. There is no tenure for teachers in NC. Career status just means due process rights to a hearing before you get fired. Since the legislature has not funded any of their previous salary scales or merit pay promises, people here are pretty sure that once they sign away their due process rights, the money will not be there either. The legislature is angry that the courts did not support their effort to take away due process rights on their previous merit pay bill, so this is their second try. A raise with strings attached and major cuts to education is not a raise. It is vindictive.
ReplyDeleteExcellent! Thank you for this!
ReplyDeleteIs it the teachers really being told to #&*! off, or every school-aged child in the state, their parents, and anyone unfortunate enough to live there in about ten years?
ReplyDeleteProbably just the teachers since these legislators are probably too stupid to realize the damage they are doing to every aspect of the state's communities,
DeleteI'm one of these NC educators you speak of. When this proposal came to light a few days ago, on the surface it seemed exciting. A 12.8% raise still won't put me back up to the step level I would have been on had they never frozen salaries, but it will increase my pay to the point that I could afford to trade in my 20 yr. old car for something a bit more reliable. It's a hard call. Tenure doesn't mean I can't be fired should they want to be ride of me, but it does give me a bit of security over the process and the time frame. But they've not lived up to any other part of the contract bargain, so why should educators believe them now?
ReplyDeleteThe saddest part is all the bright, young educators entering the work force who leave teaching almost immediately. Or the ones in college now, changing their majors to something else.
I don't believe tenure is the end all and be all. But I never thought I'd be on a fixed income in my 40's. I never thought I'd be treated so callously by our state government. I think our profession has value. And great teachers do make a difference.
So you say Virginia is hiring?
This is exactly the way I feel, multiplied a few times because I have the unfortunate reality of being a native North Carolinian, a teacher with 23 (in a few weeks 24) years experience, AND children in NC Public Schools as well. We are all screwed, teachers, students, and YOU, NC Republicans, as we all Race To The Bottom. I'm pretty damn sure we will never see that raise, or at least I won't because I'm too experienced. The language in the 'budget' makes sure of it by saying "if provisions are litigated and found unconstitutional, all teachers will be moved to the career status salary schedule", so the intimidation tactic is well at work here, because as we all know, and are reminded of by Senator Berger, our salaries are and WILL remain frozen. Oh, and it's not 11%, because along with giving up DUE PROCESS rights we are to also give up our longevity pay supplement. I remember when Longevity pay was a GOOD thing, when experienced teachers were looked upon with admiration and respect and encouraged to stay in the teaching profession. There was a time that being a teacher was a respected profession. What happened? I want my profession and my state BACK. I know, go vote, and I will as I always have. I can only hope that others will as well.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the forthrightness. I am an educator retiring early in NC. It is time. I'm thankful that we are still seeing bright, energetic, passionate young teachers arrive in the profession and (so far) choosing to stay.
ReplyDelete(Please fix the "it's" in the long paragraph. I believe it's important to eliminate any opportunity for others to dismiss an argument because of a type or grammatical error.)
Congrats on your retirement Debby Smith!
DeleteI was a teacher in NC for 7 years. I say "was" because, even though I LOVED living in Charlotte, the cost of living was going up, while my pay was not. I was only getting paid as a fourth year teacher due to not receiving step increases. Do you know how humiliating it is to be telling children to study hard and go to college, but thinking to yourself, "I went to college, got a degree and STILL have to ask my parents for money"? Do you know degrading it is to think about throwing away all your hard work and your passion and love for children, just because you need to be able to live and can't afford to do that in your chosen field? My test scores were one of the highest in my school. My students grew two years on their EOGs, in the180 days in my classroom. I was nominated for Teacher of the Year for 5 years by my colleagues. But I had to leave, not the profession, the state. I had tenure. I had a second job. But I could still not support myself. So I left and moved back home to Louisiana. Now Louisiana has another great teacher and NC has lost one. I wonder how many more great teachers will have to leave before the legislature wakes up and starts respecting teachers for all they accomplish. The sad part? It's not just the state of North Carolina. It's the way our country reacts to the educational system, and the only ones who REALLY suffer, are our children.
ReplyDeleteThis is basically my experience, too, with the exception that you got out before I did. I was there (Charlotte, Concord) for 11 years and just moved back to LA this year. Now LA has ANOTHER great teacher and NC lost one. :)
DeleteFifteen year educator here. Ten years in NC and now five years in SC. I'm a graduate of the NC Teaching Fellows, a scholarship program that was recognized nationally to recruit top-performing HS students into teaching, now a casualty of the legislature that I've truly come to believe cares not one red cent about educators.
ReplyDeleteI was born and raised in North Carolina. I was a first-generation college student and since NC had given me a fine education and a generous scholarship, I felt that part of my higher calling in becoming a teacher would be to work in NC and perhaps give some other kids out there like me that opportunity to go to college and better themselves.
And for years I believed I would retire from NC, never becoming rich, but doing good.
Towards the end of my time there (I left in late 2009) the writing had started to appear on the wall. Pay was being frozen and the corporate interests (aka the Bill Gates money funded through what came to be known in NC as the New Schools Project) was running rampant through my district. I won't go into specifics here, but I will say that when I received an email from a teacher that I worked with that was now a principal in a neighboring school district in SC, I knew that my dreams of being a NC educator for the entirety of my career would not come to pass.
As time has marched on, I've watched with morbid fascination what the NCGA has done to reduce the status, professionalism, working conditions, and pay of teachers. When the tenure bill was declared unconstitutional last week, this "solution" by Berger has left me deeply troubled and saddened.
I teared up reading this blog post to my wife. It just can't, and shouldn't, be like this.
I never understood tenure. No other profession provides that type of security. I think tenure produces teacher who develop an "I don't care" attitude.There is no incentive to keep performing at a high Kevel. If pay is an issue, maybe getting rid of tenure is a solution. Tenure is a system that breeds laziness. Increased pressure for good performance to maintain jobs may push salaries up, because they over system quality will increase.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to understand why "tenure" is so important for anyone who works outside of public education. No other professionals stake their careers on the whims of children and adolescents. No other professionals stake their careers on the whims of seven individuals with no background in their field. No other profession stakes their careers on the emotions of parents. No other profession holds bake sales to make ends meet. Never blame bad teachers for their own existence. Always blame bad managers/supervisors (read: administrators).
DeleteTenure does not and has never guaranteed employment. Any teacher in North Carolina can be fired for poor performance. The only thing tenure did was allow a teacher to appeal a disciplinary action that is logged against them. Administrators come and go faster than the teachers do. And, there are times when a new administrator has a personal/personality conflict with a teacher. Tenure protects teachers from bad administrators and that's all. Tenure will not protect poor performing teachers. Also, tenure is nothing like a union contract, although the NCGA likes to pretend that it is.
DeleteI JUST said the exact same thing the other day when I was trying to explain tenure to people outside of education. Tenure protects good teachers from bad administrators. I work for an awesome administrative team now, but it definitely has not always been that way. (Oh, and this year is this 16 year veteran's last year. I just can't make a living anymore and had to choose between my babies at home and my "babies" at school. Super, super sad.
DeleteTenure doesn't produce an "I don't care" attitude as you stated. As other's stated, tenure protects teachers from wrongly being dismissed. The "I don't care" attitude you speak of can come from teachers who truly don't care about education and helping children grow into successful adults. Even with tenure, those teacher's can be dismissed, but with due process. Saying that "good performance" should be the only way to raise teacher pay is totally unfair and biased. In our current system, good performance is based on a truly subjective evaluation from a principal that you may or may not agree with, and student performance. I have been teaching for 11 (almost 12 years) and have spent that time in classrooms from one end of the spectrum to the other. I have always excelled in the field, but have not always had students who wanted to excel. So judging my performance based on the student who is absent for 40+ days, or reads on a 1st grade reading level (I teach middle school), doesn't come to school with any supplies, sleeps in class because they were awake all night due to sharing their bedroom/living room with 5 other siblings, etc. is absurd. Sure in the business world, your performance is all about you. Not so in the world of education. I implore you to find a teacher who is "lazy". Those of us who have done all we could to increase our pay (master's degree, National Boards) and still working a 2nd job in the summer are the opposite of lazy.
DeleteTruth.
DeleteTruth.
Deleteheidi- teachers teach because they love it and care about each new class of students they teach. There is no job security or tenure in NC for K-12; career status just means you get a chance to find out why you are being fired. There are occasional bad teachers but they usually leave or are pushed out. It is a myth that there are hordes of lazy bad teachers out there. There are people making a lot of money saying that about teachers so they can take public money.
ReplyDeleteMore like hordes of lazy, bad parents not raising their kids to succeed.
DeletePublic opinion: Teachers, fix it!
Thanks for writing this, Peter. I have been teaching in NC for thirteen years now, too far in to get out but not long enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel. What is most disturbing is how many teachers here have completely checked out of the fight. Don't get me wrong, now, most days it does feel like fighting a losing battle. But I am of the opinion that someone needs to light a fire under the teachers in this state who are willing to stay and fight. In many places in NC, voter turnout amongst teachers is abysmally low. The days of being politically uninvolved are over. There are a great many teachers I know of as well who are voting for these Tea Party Republicans because of their stance on "Christian" values and hot-button conservative issues (Lest we forget, NC had a bill to make Christianity the official state religion last year). Teachers need to speak out in NC, because there are too many citizens here who are completely in the dark about the issues in education. I hope there are some of us at least who will fight tooth and nail to oust these villains! I know I am mad as hell and ready to fight!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your post! As I finish my 11th year as an educator in NC, I have never been more discouraged by what I see our state doing! Politicians say they want to attract businesses, but who wants to move a company to a location that doesn't value education? What employee wants to live where they feel their children are not going to be prepared for the future? And for the business that does move, they are likely to find employees who can’t fill their needs. The plight of education fuels the plight of the economy!
ReplyDeleteI see educators leaving the profession or state. Recently, there was an ad for a job fair held here by the Houston school system. They want our teachers and are not being subtle about it. States around us (Virginia and South Carolina, specifically) are recruiting in NC as well! When you lose those with experience, young teachers lose the mentors who help to mold them into great educators, get them through the initial tough moments when they want to leave teaching and help them grow into the mentors of tomorrow. When young people see how teachers are treated, they decide to change their lifelong dream from working in education to something else. Why would they want to submit themselves to what they see happening to those they admire as role models?
At this point, I am too old and far along towards retirement to start over, be it in a new career or a new state. But I sure wouldn't consider teaching in NC if I were starting now. Teaching was not my first career choice, I didn't expect to stay in it. It was supposed pay bills until I found something else. But, over the years, it has become my love, passion and career. Like many (in or out of education), I complain but can’t imagine doing anything else. I learned to live with low pay by cutting back. But as the cost of living increases and pay remains stagnant, one can only cut so much.
But, there are solutions to making our politicians see the error in their thinking and hopefully encouraging them to change the direction our state is headed. You see employees in other industries strike or hear about the sit-ins held in past decades. This is not a solution for today's educator. Striking and sit-ins fuel the politicians’ fire, allowing them to say 'see...we were right! teachers only care about their own greedy pockets!' Besides, this sort of behavior is not in the nature of teachers, at least not the ones I have come to know.
However, if every teacher (and I do mean EVERY) in the state were to live up to their agreed upon contract to the letter of the law, it would send a statement that is loud and clear! It’s simple: I am contracted from 8-4, Monday-Friday: want extracurricular activities, tutoring, meetings, or prompt grading? It needs to be done during the school day.
This wouldn't be easy for the average teacher. But, think about it. How many people do you know REGULARLY bring their work home with them or stay extra hours without any kind of kind of compensation? Sure, everyone does this at times but most educators do it daily, grading work, improving/building lessons and giving up personal time and money to make sure students succeed and have an enjoyable social life to round out their educational experience. How many people give up their unpaid "vacation" time (you know - the summer break we get or those during the year where we take mandated leave) to continue working on lessons, grading work or paying for our own professional development to stay abreast of what changes are coming or learn new material we will teach the following year? If politicians want to make teacher pay contract based, they really should know what they are getting from those contracts.
Thanks for letting me rant. The plight of education in NC is a travesty and somehow, it needs to be fixed. As tempting as an 11% raise sounds after years of nothing, I know this teacher is leaning toward due process. The question is: how long can I continue in the career and school I love without having to drastically change something in my life??!!!
Great read, my jaw dropped last week when I heard them say, "Get a raise if you give up your tenure, but you can't have both" Texas also has a campaign to hire NC Teachers. It is ashamed we have funding through a lottery, still pay taxes, but quickly gaining the reputation as the worst schools in the US because we refuse to afford good, qualified teachers. Why would anyone stay when they can make more as a stocker at the local grocery store? I don't get it! And.... to say not sure when, or if another raise will be given for a long time, I'd keep my tenure and tell them to stick their raise up their hind ends. I wanted to come back to North Carolina because I loved it 24 years ago. I still love the location, and still love Rosman, but what legislators are doing to the school programs as well as the economic programs, such as industry, or the lack of because they want to promote "tourism" is deplorable!
ReplyDeleteYou are really missing the much much bigger picture. In order for NC to have a private education system based on profit. They must first destroy the current system. Because that is really why we get into anything right? PROFIT! It is the American way.....
ReplyDelete(please note that there is sarcasm in use here)
yup. How can the charter school system and voucher system thrive if the dumb old public schools are in the way? privatization is the name of the game, because business leaders think schools work like factories and if the product is defective, it must be the assembly line worker's fault for not following directions. Do we fire every psychiatrist whose patient murders or commits suicide? No. Do we fire every doctor whose patient isn't healed? No. Do we fire every Congressman who isn't liked by all of his constituents? I wish, but no.
DeletePeople that say that "tenure" (CAREER STATUS) breeds laziness haven't ever taught, because if you are lazy….you'll quit teaching after a week. There are far better jobs for people who don't WANT to work so hard to improve.
On top of the tenure issue, this budget calls for the firing of 7,000 teaching assistants across the state in order to fund these raises for the teachers. So, if the teachers approve of this budget, then it will look like they don't care about either the TA's or the children. Nice.
ReplyDeleteI am from NC, and I have lived here all of my life. I was educated through NC public schools and went to college to pursue education at a state supported public university. I have been a teacher in NC for 23 years...to far in to get out at this point. My husband is also a public school educator in NC. What our current General ASSembly has done to educators and the educational system in this state is horrific and disrespectful. The sad thing is that many of them who make the laws about education think we get "8 weeks of paid vacation in the summer" and that we have an "active teacher's union" in this state. These quotes were taken directly from the mouth of a GA Representative complaining that we should be "Grateful" for this. I have a daughter going to college next year and have to get loans that will take us years to pay back because we have not had the luxury of saving what is needed to pay the costs. I work 3 part time job in the summer and one of them is year round. Education in this state used to be great under the leadership of Gov. Jim Hunt, but hopefully voters will get out and vote these clowns out of office. I am ashamed to call myself a North Carolinian anymore. Our state is Beautiful and the population here has been booming for years, but that is changing quickly as parents move elsewhere because of the laws created by the idiots in Raleigh.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I moved here from Wyoming in 1999, following a job in the computer field. Our first introduction to education in North Carolina was something of a shock. Our oldest son was far ahead of his class, and bored. When he came home with a certificate celebrating his mastery of multiplication that we found depended on using a calculator, we started looking at private schools.
ReplyDeleteIt was about that time that the tech bubble burst and my husband was job hunting in a state where the economy was on life support and the unemployment rate was discouraging, at best. I convinced him to take his physics degree and strange ability to explain the same concept 400 ways to the local school district.
It did not go well. Dan was hired on at one of our local middle schools a few days before Halloween. When he was hired as a lateral entry teacher he was told he would receive plenty of support in the form of training and an experienced teacher in the school as a mentor. The training never happened - his principal told him the school didn't have money to send him or pay for the substitute to cover his class, and we were too green to know that excuse was BS. His mentor was the librarian, so she didn't have a lot to offer on teaching math and science, but she did try. At least until she suffered a fall a few weeks after he started and left for the rest of the year. No other mentor was assigned. Dan also found out that when they hired him, they rearranged the entire 8th grade...just for him! Yes, they took all of the students who were struggling in either math or science, or (it turned out) just got on their teacher's nerves, and stuffed them all into his classes. The theory was, he was going to suck anyway, so why not let the kids who were on the path to success stay with the "good" teachers, and let the new guy fail with the kids who were going to fail anyway. It was the year from hell, and he didn't step into another classroom for two years.
When he went back, it was to teach high school chemistry and Earth environmental. He landed at a magnet school in Greensboro. Much smaller class sizes, committed kids, and supportive parents and guardians made the school a complete change from what he'd experienced before. He's been there seven years now, and for the most part he's been very happy there.
But...
They were promised there would be bonuses for performance - the state didn't have enough money to pay them. Ever. They froze pay seven years ago - not just for teachers, but for ALL state employees that aren't legislators or the governor. Don’t even ask about the “Education Lottery.” The state is pushing for a change to e-text books, but the school system has been promising an update to his classroom computer system for years and hasn't done it yet - which is why he can't access quite a few of the online resources that he'd come to count on.
It stuns me that the legislature thinks teachers will be stupid enough to believe that the promises being made will be honored after they've broken most (if not all) the promises they've made up 'til now. I have become convinced that all of this is not coincidence - let's face it, the more poorly educated your constituents are, the easier it is to lead them where you want them.
The GOP legislature has one and only one goal in mind - to destroy the public education system in NC. They want our tax dollars to go to private companies that sell education.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is one of the main reasons (besides Common Core) I am retiring after 31 years!
ReplyDeleteI too am a teacher in NC... 25 years into an amazing experience, well as long as I don't let the NCGA get to me. And for 18 years that was pretty easy to do. I got a raise each year. It wasn't much, but it was a raise. When my students and school preformed well I got a bonus. At 10 years I started getting longevity pay. The ABC bonus stopped years ago. As has been pointed out, the cost of living has gone up, but my pay hasn't. I've lost my house, partially because of this. I have no college fund for my children and it's not likely I'll be able to get loans for them either. For a long time I stayed out of the politics of education. But that has changed. I will finish my 30 years here... I hope. Retire and move to another state and teach there for about 10 more years. That is assuming nothing changes in NC, and I hope and pray it does because this is my home.
ReplyDeleteI understand that there are bad teachers out there. I actually decided to become a teacher because I had to observe in a classroom while in college and I was appalled. Almost daily I hear about one of the middle school teachers from members of my school community... this woman really should get out of education. She is a good example of why the rest of us are being punished. The problem is, in my 25 year career, I can only name two teachers that I've worked with that I considered "bad" teachers. I've worked with hundreds of teachers. Currently, the staff I work with is amazing. As I work with every single one of the teachers in the school because I am a reading specialist, I'm not just saying this out of loyalty... I see what happens in their classrooms. They're good.
An 11% pay raise is so tempting... I would be able to start putting a little away for my own children's college. Wouldn't be much, but it would be something. I would be able to eat more than soup during the last week of the month, might even get to eat out once in a while. I wouldn't have to worry about gas for the car. I wouldn't have to be one of the parents asking for scholarships for school trips for my own children. I might even be able to buy a new pair of shoes. But this raise is at such a price.
ReplyDeleteFor me personally, losing tenure. But if I do my job I should be ok right? Or not... I'm more expensive than a beginning teacher. If a parent gets mad it would be easier to get rid of me than find solutions. We already work in an environment where everyone worries that even the most simple hug will be misconstrued... and kids want hugs. Then there is losing longevity. I've given my adult life to this state, why should I loose longevity? My father use to get a bonus at the end of the year. When I worked a 2nd job at CVS the managers got bonuses. All I get is longevity. Why should I loose that? Then there is the insurance increase... again. Last time teachers in NC got a pay raise our insurance also went up... actually more than the pay raise. So the next year I got less money each month instead of more. And all the co-pays went up as well. Now, I don't think the 11% will be completely be taken up by insurance increases, but if we do the Governor's proposal, I'm pretty sure his 2% will be taken up with the increases.
And now what will happen to the school and the reading program that I run if I personally get an 11% raise. Let's start with the teacher assistants. This budget proposes to cut half of them. These paraprofessionals do so much for the elementary school classroom. Let's start with what is never discussed. Elementary school teachers DO NOT GET A BREAK during the day. We do not have an hour/hour and a half planning time. Maybe once a week if specials like Art, Music and PE are back to back in a block schedule. But that doesn't always happen and it's not daily. And you can't leave 20 five year olds alone in a classroom to go to the bathroom or make a phone call. The assistants at my school also help with lunch so that after the teachers get all the students through the lunch line, they have about 20 minutes to eat. But assistants are much more than an extra person in the room, they help teach. Elementary schools have heterogeneous mixture of students... students that are learning disabled, mentally handicapped to students that are academically gifted in the same room. Children with IQs of 70 are with children with IQs of 130. That is quite a spread. Teacher assistants help teachers in K-3 classrooms adjust instruction to meet the needs of all students. They work with the student's that have difficulties with reading, writing and math in small groups or one on one while the teacher instructs the rest of the class or monitors their work. The assistant takes small groups of high performing students out when they have mastered a concept to do enrichment work while the classroom teachers continues basic instruction with the rest of the class. And then there is the reading program that I facilitate. I use every one of the 11 assistants at my school plus the five that I employ in my program to run small guided reading groups. This provides instructional level reading to every child in the school. Without the assistants, I don't have a program. At least not the program I have now. Fewer academically needy children will be served and the academically gifted children will probably be left on their own with a book and independent work packets. With the 11% pay increase it looks like we will only have about 6 assistants and I will loose at least one of mine because I won't have the budget to have all five. Might even have to loose two of them. My personal belief is that it doesn't really matter what materials or technology I have, if I don't have the people to instruct the students. I am blessed with five amazing paraprofessionals... two of them with degrees in education. These people make a difference. Now lets move to text books. They are going to cut the textbook budget or keep it the same. Most text books cost around $24, at least elementary school ones. The budget is something like $13 per child. Do the math. Technology is being frozen or cut... but we are required to use technology as much as possible. Which is a good thing, if you have the technology. Getting 5 ipads or 5 computers at a time while the old ones you have go out of date is not very productive.
ReplyDeleteHigh School science is $76 each on average. Last textbook purchase was 2006 before....well a whole bunch of stuff.
DeleteWhen a government wants to truly take over people's lives and become more totalitarian, one of the first steps is to rid its citizens of education and replace it with a system of indoctrination. If people are educated, they will question. A developing totalitarian regime does not want people to question and punishes those who do once the regime has claimed total power.
ReplyDeleteWe forget that Nazi Germany banned and burned books. Teachers were ousted from their posts if they did not tow the party line.
How is this different from what is going on here in North Carolina today? The North Carolina Republicans do NOT want an educated populace because that populace will begin to question. Why pay for textbooks? Not buying textbooks keeps the state from having a good old fashioned book burning. If a teacher wants a raise all he or she has to do is tow the party line and give away their right to due process. Am I the only one who sees the parallel?
NC seems to be spiraling downhill on all sorts of fronts, and the attack on the institution of public education is just one of them. But unfortunately, so many other states are following the same path when it comes to our profession. The very obvious flogging of educators in NC is disgraceful and frightening, but the same attacks are happening in states all over the country, albeit somewhat more subtly, in the form of the ridiculous Common Core "Standards" and the Byzantine "Data Driven" teacher assessments. While it's not in our nature as people who actually want the very best for our students, I wish we could organize a "Work To Rule" month across the country, because the assault on us has been so unyielding these past several years. Anyway, my support goes out to you dedicated teachers in NC. Hopefully there will be some kind of groundswell historical "Correct" to this current trend, but meanwhile, unlike curmuducation, I do advise my high school seniors to think long and hard before going into this business. Sad.
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