North Carolina GOP legislators continue to disrespect the educational community. The GOP has been trying to override Democratic Governor Cooper’s veto of their budget, but apparently to no avail. Notes From The Chalkboard reports on the GOP’s alternative approach:
A new piecemeal strategy is emerging with state legislators introducing a series of “mini budget” bills which are essentially just individual pieces of the state budget Cooper vetoed two months ago. On Friday the governor signed into law pay raises for state employees such as State Bureau of Investigations, Alcohol [sic] Law Enforcement and Highway Patrol. The bill did not include pay raises for educators. Cooper said, “We appreciate our hardworking state employees across North Carolina. However, Republicans are insisting that teachers get a smaller pay raise than other state employees. This hurts our efforts to attract and keep highly qualified teachers in every classroom. I urge Republican legislators to pass a pay raise that doesn’t shortchange teachers.”
Attempts to amend these bills by Democrats in order to add pay raises for teachers didn’t even get a hearing.
Teachers unions do tend to vote for Democrats, so I wonder if this is all about the GOP punishing the unions for their political inclinations. It certainly doesn’t make sense for the GOP, or anyone who values education, to put in place a system which ensures superior teachers will move elsewhere, leaving only inexperienced and inferior teachers to teach in their schools.
And alienate the teachers and potentially everyone who knows a teacher.
An alternative theory would have to do with discrediting the public school system, since the GOP could deny that the teachers were inferior based on pay – it’s not like pointing at a tornado and saying it destroyed your home, there’s wiggle room when it comes to connecting teacher pay and educational outcomes.
But, in the end, the failure of for-profit schools makes this sort of motivation a mug’s game. Oddly enough, though, it is potentially becoming another holy tenet of the GOP, in its headlong rush to make government smaller in the belief that the free market can provide everything you need. As long-time readers of this blog know, I do not believe schooling fits the free market profile for legit markets.
The North Carolina GOP, in my view, is putting its long term survival at risk because they’re putting their children’s future at risk. If & when North Carolina parents come to understand that, the GOP may suddenly lose a helluva lot seats in Charlotte.
[H/T RWK]
