The Washington Post has published a piece on the disaster of the North Carolina legislature’s handling of the their education system, written by a former NC educator, James Hogan. A few points:
When North Carolina Republicans took control of the state government in 2012, they quickly set into motion a sweeping agenda to enact conservative social reforms and vastly change how the state spends its money. It was the first time in more than a century that Republicans enjoyed such political dominance in our state.
What brought them all to town? A good reason: in the 2011-12 budget year, North Carolina projected a multi-billion dollar deficit, enough to rank the state among the worst budget offenders in the country and bring a new slate of elected legislators to Raleigh. So Republicans, with a clear mandate to clean up the fiscal mess in November 2012, set to work righting the ship.
So some might argue this to be the fault of the Democrats; others would suggest neither is competent. I lean towards the continuing conundrum of amateur lawmakers – primed with ideology and tactics and strategies long-discarded by the professionals of years gone by, they rampage about, certain in their righteousness, while the rest of us groan at the mess to be cleaned up.
Education being a third of the state budget, it does make sense that legislators might make it a target.
Later in the 2013 session, though, the most radical changes in state financing fell into place. Republicans reconstructed the state’s tax code, relieving the burden on corporations and wealthy residents. They continued to take aim at other parts of the education budget, cutting More at Four program dollars and decreasing accessibility for poor families. The state lost thousands more teacher and teacher assistant positions. The bloodletting was fierce. …
Republicans defended these austerity measures by saying that lower taxes would eventually yield fiscal growth. And they were right. This year, the government is enjoying a $445 million surplus–a clear victory in light of those multi-billion dollar deficits of yore–but still a statistically small number in light of the state’s $21 billion budget (about two percent), especially after considering that our state budget is still smaller than it was in 2011.
It’s always dangerous to come to such a casual conclusion in an environment with many variables: Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It’s unjustified.
Curiously, the Republican-held capital didn’t stop at defunding education. They also took aim at teachers.
The Republicans and their libertarian allies have long disliked the teachers’ unions, the latter due to the difficulties in discharging incompetent teachers – the libertarians value economic efficiency, being who they are, and protecting the incompetent is deeply frictional. The drive of unions to protect all of their members, so logical from the inside, is one of the features of unions that drives outsiders nuts. (In the vein of economic efficiency, the tendency of unions to drive up salaries is also an irritant to the libertarians.)
And here’s the goal:
First, weaken schools. Then print parents a ticket out–and into for-profit schools
North Carolina schools were dealt another blow when the legislature re-ordered how schools are evaluated in 2012. The new evaluations, which used an A-F grading system, were intended to provide an easier to understand metric for school effectiveness.The result? More than 700 of the state’s public schools (nearly thirty percent) received a score of D or F. Many parents struggled to understand how so many schools could so quickly fail. …
No matter, though. It was perfect timing for the legislature’s next move: with this new “evidence” that North Carolina schools were failing in their mission, the state could move forward with its plan to grant parents options–freedom of choice was how the Republicans phrased it–and built a tuition voucher plan that sent tax dollars to parents who opted out of public schools and into private or religious schools.
Hogan blames this on lobbyist groups at the capitol, but the legislators are no doubt ideologically predisposed towards a scheme like this: these are the words and concepts played for the 30 years or more throughout the conservative. But the confusion of the metrics of the economic sector with the metrics of the educational sector is provocative and deserves a post of its own, if only so I can work out what I think I’m talking about.
