As many as 10 North Carolina public school systems could get more flexibility in spending taxpayers’ money under a proposal moving through the state House. That flexibility could extend to teacher pay under an amendment adopted despite concerns from the state’s largest teachers group.
“Those of us who’ve been on school boards have made this argument for a long time, that if we were given a little more flexibility in the use of funds, we might move from being truly good to great,” said Rep. Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland, while presenting House Bill 584 to the House Education Committee April 9. “But there are limitations placed on the categories when we [in the General Assembly] send funds, and for districts that have earned their flexibility, they ought to be able to use that flexibility.”
Glazier and three fellow Democrats sponsored H.B. 584, which would create a pilot program to test local school budget flexibility. The Education Committee approved the bill on a voice vote and sent it forward to the budget-writing Appropriations Committee.
“Some of us have been arguing on all sides of the spectrum that giving good managers flexibility to do things differently than the rules might otherwise prohibit them from doing will get you better student outcomes and better student achievement,” Glazier said. “That’s a good experiment.”
Some supporters cited the example of current rules for North Carolina’s charter schools. “This bill sort of puts me in mind of a day in the future when we might be able to draw on some of that flexibility that has been given to charter schools to feed flexibility into the regular [Local Education Agency],” said Rep. Susan Fisher, D-Buncombe.
Glazier agreed. “In the charter schools that are working well … flexibility used well by good managers has produced innovation and results,” he said. “Hopefully, we’re going to see the same thing at the LEA level. That’s the goal obviously and the theory as it’s been espoused.”
Real flexibility is the key to a successful pilot project, Glazier said. “It has to be very tightly controlled in the sense of monitoring,” he said. “But if it’s going to be an experiment, we all can’t say, ‘Yes, you can have flexibility, but you can’t have flexibility here, here, here, and here.’ That’s not flexibility.”
Teacher pay
Given that understanding of flexibility, Glazier accepted a committee amendment from House Minority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake, that could pave the way for local school systems to offer higher pay for certain teachers.
“Suppose this great school system is really able to lower non-instructional support positions or do something else to save money, would the bill allow them to have differential pay for special ed or math or science teachers, and to pay them no less than the existing salary structure?” Stam asked.
“It’s important that the districts have full flexibility to do the things they need to achieve,” Glazier responded. “In that case, it seems to me that the capacity that exists now in bonusing and differential [pay] is something that a district could explore.”
The N.C. Association of Educators raised a red flag about Stam’s amendment. “We’re excited about the bill, and we think it’s a good idea,” said Brian Lewis, NCAE government relations specialist. “However, one of the issues that we didn’t sign off on is the idea that some of the flexible pilots would be able to offer differentiated pay.”
The state’s largest teachers group already has expressed its willingness to study differentiated pay in the context of another bill Glazier is sponsoring, Lewis said. He asked committee members to defer a vote on Stam’s proposal. “NCAE could come back to the table with Rep. Glazier, and we could work out maybe some ideas where teachers and school personnel could be at the table as we explore differentiated pay in these pilot areas,” Lewis said.
Glazier downplayed NCAE’s concerns. “This bill wasn’t certainly designed to be giving everyone — and I don’t think they would do — differentiated pay, in many respects, but I do think that if we talk about flexibility, we ought not be saying all the things you can’t do, because we’re all going to start adding them in.”
“For purposes of getting the bill out today and really staying attuned to the philosophy of flexibility means flexibility … we may not like everything they do, but it’s not flexible if we start telling them what they can’t do,” Glazier added. “And so I would ask that you pass the Stam amendment, and we’ll continue the discussions on how we limit that later.”
Pilot program
The State Board of Education and Department of Public Instruction would choose 20 of the state’s 115 local school systems to participate in the pilot, according to the bill’s text. Each of the 20 districts would be “high-performing,” based on an evaluation that factors in test scores, graduation rates, No Child Left Behind results, teacher turnover, sound bookkeeping, percentage of local money spent outside the classroom, and other factors.
Half of the districts in the pilot program would operate with the same budgetary restrictions as the rest of the school systems across North Carolina. The other half, a total of 10 districts, would get more leeway to use state funds in ways their local school boards and superintendents determine themselves. The pilot program would continue for three years, Glazier said.
The state would spend $150,000 in the next budget year to pay for an “independent research organization” to help conduct the pilot program. The bill does not call for any additional money for participating school systems.
“This year, we are not going to be giving districts more money,” Glazier warned. “We are going to be giving districts — in any scenario, it appears — fairly significantly less money. The question, of course, is how much? But what we can do, for those districts that have earned flexibility, for those districts who really have managerial capacity to try to move a true step forward, is to say to them what we’ve tried to before but have never really given them the authority to do. That is a pilot that is actually going to say to you: Here is your allocation. You may truly use [it] how you see fit for your community to best advance you on a yearly basis academically.”
High performers only
Some Education Committee members questioned the decision to focus only on “high-performing” school districts. “I understand the concept that poor managers you don’t want to give flexibility to, but on the other hand, our low-performing schools are the ones who most need improvement,” said Rep. Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke. “By limiting the flexibility to school systems that are already high-performing, I wonder if we are depriving ourselves of some important data, that we ought to have some low-performing schools and a cohort of them that are not included in the flexibility to determine if even in those situations, flexibility may help even a poor manager manage better.”
Rep. Darrell McCormick, R-Yadkin, raised similar concerns. “As this is a pilot program — not something that’s being implemented across the board — wouldn’t it serve our purposes to gather data from how more flexibility in the low-performing schools might improve their situation just as much as how more flexibility might improve or impact the high-performing schools?”
Concerns about surrendering more authority to low-performing schools might endanger H.B. 584, Glazier responded. That’s why he shied away from including those schools in the proposal, he said. As the bill moves forward, Glazier said, he would be willing to discuss a second pilot focusing on some low-performing school systems.
The pilot project could “advance student achievement for all students,” Glazier said. “There are a lot of districts that do not have the administrative capacity to do this and ought not be given this flexibility,” he said. “I’d be frightened to give some districts the flexibility. But there are a number that have earned it. And we’ll never know — if we don’t give them that — whether they can truly go from good to great.”
The proposal could end up in the House’s budget plan. It would need support from the full House and Senate to move forward.
Mitch Kokai is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.