We need to prioritize principals in 2016 state budget- Walter McDowell
As a business leader, I know the value of great leadership on my executive teams, and in our public schools. That’s why a top priority for me as a member of BEST NC has been to encourage substantial and sustained investments in principal compensation. Investing in our principals is a fundamental principle of investing in our schools and our children.
Don’t forget about principals when handing out raises- Walter McDowell
It’s time for North Carolina to treat principals with the respect and compensation they deserve. As the legislative session resumes next week, business leaders across North Carolina will be looking for a strong focus on what we know is key to the success of any organization – the best possible talent. For BEST NC members who believe that North Carolina can have the best education system in the nation, this means a strong focus on North Carolina’s educators.
‘- Facts vs-facts in education debate
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_hidrop] Facts vs. facts in education debate by Ferrel Guillory | February 26, 2016 Keith Poston and James Ford of the Public Schools Forum of NC. Photo Credit: Alex Granados/EdNC To provide more in-depth coverage on schools in North Carolina, EdNC will shortly launch the EdData Dashboard. Our editor, Mebane Rash, and her staff have produced a handsome, easy-to-use, and substantive “dashboard’’ that they will up-date quarterly. We trust you will find the data charts, graphs, and packages informative, enriching your perspectives on education in our state. We welcome your comments and suggestions. I often repeat the time-honored wisdom that “data without analysis is junk.” Yes, we have to put the facts down. But we also have to array facts, connect dots, and examine time lines to make the facts mean something by which to drive action. This week’s column examines the challenge of dealing with data. Elections call upon voters to compare and contrast candidates in terms of personality, policy, and partisanship, as well as ability, priorities, and values. As the education issues play out in campaign 2016 in North Carolina, voters will encounter another dimension of debate: facts fighting facts. What’s an engaged citizen to do as candidates, parties, think tanks, and advocacy groups offer an array of facts, all objectively accurate but telling conflicting stories and leading to clashing conclusions about North Carolina and its schools? There’s no easy answer, except to weigh the competing facts and assess which set of statistics offer a story that adds up to reality. Already, Gov. Pat McCrory and Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, the Republican incumbents seeking re-election, have spelled out a long list of facts in explanation and defense of the GOP record since gaining control of the governorship and the General Assembly by a veto-proof majority in 2012. The governor’s list appears under the “record of success’’ section of his campaign’s website. Forest, who as lieutenant governor serves on the State Board of Education, has emerged as a more aggressive, and charismatic, champion of the Republican message on schools. A few days ago, he stepped before the combined Wake County Republican precinct caucuses and sought to arm party activists with data-points to counter “misinformation (that) Republicans are decimating education.” Forest also has posted three education-oriented videos, one entitled “education fast facts,’’ on his campaign website and YouTube. Both the governor and lieutenant governor draw a contrast between the education budgets under former Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue and under Republicans since 2012. McCrory points to spending reductions of “almost $1 billion between 2008 and 2011.” Forest says Republicans have put “$1.5 billion back into education,” thus spending “more than ever in the history of North Carolina.” As you consider those facts do so in the context of the Great Recession of 2008-09 that produced a drastic upward spike in unemployment and a downward spike in state revenues. Whoever, Democrats or Republicans, ruled in Raleigh between 2009 and 2012 would have had to slash state spending or raise taxes or both, to produce a balanced budget as the iron-clad law provides. As the economy recovered over the past three years, Republicans have appropriated more in total dollars to K-12 education. Independent analysts and advocacy groups, some of which are critics of the current administration, offer other facts. Some draw on data from before the Great Recession. Others focus on growth in enrollment. For example, a recent report by the nonpartisan Public School Forum of North Carolina presents a state-by-state chart showing that North Carolina’s per pupil spending, adjusted for inflation, declined by $855 from fiscal 2008 to 2015, the sixth largest decline among states. The 2016 Facts and Figures publication by BEST NC, a nonprofit formed by business leaders, reports that “North Carolina ranked 46th in the country in total K-12 per-pupil spending in 2014-15 in constant dollars, but 39th in cost of living adjusted dollars.” The McCrory campaign website says that “in 2014 the average salary for teachers in North Carolina increased more than any other state in the nation.” A Forest video says the state’s previous leadership had “frozen’’ teacher pay for years, then Republicans raised teacher pay an average of 11 percent. The legislature’s website has a chart of pay raises for teachers and state employees going back to 1973-74: It shows substantial teacher pay raises before the Great Recession. Teacher pay raises averaged 8.2 percent, 5 percent, and 3 percent in the last three years of Democratic Gov. Mike Easley’s administration. Then came no pay raise for three consecutive fiscal years – “frozen’’ from 2009 to 2012 – budgets hard hit by the recession. Teachers received a 1.2 percent raise in 2012-13 and then, as the legislative staff calculated, raises ranging from .5 percent to 18.5 percent (a 7 percent average) in 2014-15. Republican legislators have targeted raises on early-career teachers, while also revising the career “step-increase’’ pay system. The most recent pay legislation gave some experienced teachers a step increase, again increased new teachers’ pay and provided a one-time $750 raise across the board. The BEST NC report has a chart comparing North Carolina teacher compensation to the national average. In 2001, the North Carolina average was $41,496, just below the national average of $43,378. The gap widened to more than $10,000 by 2014. The latest pay raise brings North Carolina up to about $50,000, still below the national average. The Public School Forum reports that North Carolina ranks 42nd among the states in teacher pay, up from 47th a year earlier. In his talk to Wake Republicans, Forest declared, “Teachers are not leaving North Carolina in droves; how many of you know that?” In one of his videos, the lieutenant governor deconstructs a state report on teacher turnover to make the point that 6.8 percent of teachers fully left the profession last year, well below the 14.9 percent turnover rate widely reported. Only one percent has gone to other states, he said. […]
Legislatures get mixed bag of teacher pay proposals
NEWS: CJ EXCLUSIVES Legislators Get Mixed Bag of Teacher PayProposals Atkinson’s call for 10-percent hike draws cool reception Legislators Get Mixed Bag of Teacher Pay Proposals – Carolina Journal From left, Best NC’s Brenda Berg, the John Locke Foundation’s Terry Stoops, and state Superintendent June Atkinson prepare to discuss teacher compensation on Jan. 27 before a House committee. (CJ Photo by Barry Smith) Barry Smith in CJExclusives February 1, 2016 4:30PM Before a state House committee last Wednesday, state Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson recommended that all public school teachers in North Carolina get a 10 percent boost in their pay as part of a four-part plan to increase teacher compensation. Several members of the House Select Committee on Education Strategy and Practices were skeptical of the value of across-the-board raises along with their cost. In a presentation later that day, Terry Stoops, director of research and education studies at the John Locke Foundation, said universal pay raises send the wrong signals to the best and worst classroom teachers. And in remarks the following day to the same panel, House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, rejected the idea of a 10-percent raise. Atkinson, who is running for re-election, likened the tiers of compensation to a four-layered wedding cake. The base level of the cake must be competitive enough to be attractive, Atkinson said. “I would want North Carolina to be extremely bold and to look toward a 10 percent increase for all of our teachers,” Atkinson said. The cost for providing all teachers 10 percent raises would be around $540 million. Rep. Jonathan Jordan, R-Ashe, asked Atkinson if spending the additional money would guarantee an end to the state’s teacher compensation problems. Atkinson said that she wanted to provide the committee with cost figures. “I recognize that it is a big item,” Atkinson said. “As state superintendent you have in statute that it is my responsibility to let the needs of our schools be known. If I were in your shoes, I would be worrying about that money, too.” Also presenting to the committee Wednesday were Stoops, Trip Stallings, director of policy research at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at N.C. State University, and Brenda Berg, president and CEO at Best NC. Stoops said he didn’t like across-the-board raises because they encourage bad teachers to remain on the job. “When you raise salaries across the board, both your best teachers and your worst teachers receive that salary, you are incentivizing the bad teachers to stay in the profession because they’re assuming that the across-the-board pay increase is what they will keep receiving, regardless of how they are performing,” Stoops said. “This creates a situation where we are essentially allowing those poor teachers to stay in the profession, and not really rewarding our most effective teachers.” Stoops said having a performance-based pay or differentiated pay would allow the best teachers to receive the compensation they deserve. Atkinson said the second layer of compensation requires identifying a certain percentage of teachers to be designated as teacher leaders, who would get additional pay for their roles. These teachers could be instructional coaches, peer evaluators, or grade level coordinators, among other things, she said. A third layer would boost compensation to attract teachers to low performing schools. The fourth layer would provide bonuses for teachers at schools that exceed anticipated growth, Atkinson said. Stallings said that differential pay is complex and cautioned against having a one-size-fits all approach to such salary boosts. He said that there is “very little evidence” of an impact on student performance when the focus is on pay-for-performance only. “What works in Charlotte is probably not going to work in Bertie County,” Stallings said. Stoops said that the purpose for having differential pay is teacher retention. He also said that teachers leave their job for various reasons, not just pay. “It’s not just compensation,” Stoops said. “It’s personal circumstances. They don’t like their principal. They think the school district is too big. The working conditions are terrible. They don’t have the books that they need, or the labor market is somehow enticing them to move on to another field.” Berg, from BEST NC, a nonprofit coalition of business leaders promoting improvements in public schools, said there a national crisis is brewing because millennials don’t want to go into the teaching profession. “Compensation is a piece of the puzzle,” Berg said. But she suggested that there is a need to treat teachers more like professionals. Berg offered some suggestions, such as providing scholarships or repaying student loans to teachers who get their degrees in North Carolina and agree to work hereafterward. “We need to elevate our respect for teachers,” Berg said. Rep. Paul “Skip” Stam, R-Wake, also suggested that the state no longer consider individual teachers’ salaries public records. “I think that’s the main reason that so many of they say they don’t want a differentiated performance pay because of envy and jealousy,” Stam said. “They don’t want their friend down the hall to know that they’re making $2,000 more than they are.” Even though Moore rejected Atkinson’s proposal for a 10-percent raise, Stoops said he expected this year’s short session of the General Assembly to enact a smaller across-the-board pay increase. “The amount of that pay raise will depend on the revenue outlook and the pressures from other budgetary areas,” Stoops said. “I would say 5 percent would be the ceiling.” categories: Education (PreK-12), K-12 Education, Spending & Taxes tags: ncga, teacher pay Click here to view the Legislators Get Mixed Bag of Teacher Pay Proposals PDF