It appears the current North Carolina administration, assuming it retains power in the upcoming election, is planning to continue to defund education, as has been discussed in the past here. A North Carolina reader and educator sends a report entitled “McCrory administration asks schools to submit plans for $173 million budget cut,” from NC Policy Watch:
Request comes despite large state surplus and big unmet education needs
After years of complaints of paltry spending on public education in North Carolina, public school leaders say they may soon be facing another round of devastating cuts.
School officials say a late August memo from Gov. Pat McCrory’s chief budget officer signals that all state departments, including the public schools, must soon present options for a 2 percent cut in their 2017-2019 budget, roughly a $173 million loss for North Carolina schools.
Having talked with our NC educator, I know they’re already operating on a shoe-string, so this would further endanger the quality of education delivered to the children.
And this from a GOP administration which supposedly cherishes family values, one of which would supposedly be that children should be well-educated. In the absence of churlish thoughts, it’s a bewildering exercise to contemplate.
In view of the earlier absurd note (embedded in a long post here) from University of North Carolina board member Steven Long, “We’re capitalists, and we have to look at what the demand is, and we have to respond to the demand,” this report from the above article drew some hearty guffaws at its glib attempt to justify this potential action:
[Andrew Heath, state budget director for Governor McCrory] could not be reached for a phone interview this week, citing the ongoing cleanup from Hurricane Matthew, but he told Policy Watch in an email that the Aug. 26 memo is simply following “longstanding and prudent budget development process employed by” his Office of State Budget Management, or OSBM.
If this guy had any courage, he’d just say that the Governor wants to squeeze the nuts of the teachers’ union a little tighter, make the schools a little less effective, with a long range plan of introducing for-profit schools. Then they have faith that profit will drive good education. Is there any evidence that for profit schools outperform traditional, state-funded schools? While a well run for-profit will certainly outperform a poorly run traditional school, I am not aware of any strong evidence of for-profit showing persistent out performance, and I’d be suspicious of such a claim – interested readers may want to consult this post. In a nutshell, and something even I’m getting tired of writing (and persistent readers are no doubt tired of reading), the processes of the private sector are not optimized for the goals of the education sector – and that will usually result in sub-optimal results.
But apparently they have no balls, as the article goes on to note that some sort of odd subterfuge is being employed to obscure this deprivation from the North Carolina electorate.
Screenshot from RealClearPolitics
So how is the election looking for McCrory (R)? His opponent is current NC Attorney General Roy Cooper (D). The current polling shows McCrory may not be returned to office – he appears to be 4.6 percentage points behind, according to the RealClearPolitics polling data, as displayed to the right. However, Cooper is not over 50%, so McCrory might still pull the election out of the fire.
But if he does lose, I surely hope Cooper turns out to be an outstanding Governor. The recent devotion to turning education into a profit center (see previous posts in this thread to see the admiration of North Carolina’s methods by private education advocates) has certainly put a dent in North Carolina’s standing in education and may negatively affect children growing up in the State for years or even decades to come.
[Edited 12/10/16: fix typo.]
