This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Terry Stoops, Education Policy Analyst for the John Locke Foundation.
If the budget recommendations released by the General Assembly’s Joint Appropriations Subcommittee on Education are any indication, we are going to see another year of wasteful spending on milli vanilli education initiatives. Here are some key issues to consider:
Dropout Prevention Grants, Round Two. Last year, the legislature appropriated $7 million for 60 dropout prevention grants, and now legislators have proposed funding additional grant projects at a cost of $10 million. Obviously, the state should evaluate the first group of grants before it spends millions on additional projects, but an earnest evaluation of the grants would merely embarrass legislators.
After all, evaluating life coaches (Chowan County, $150,000), step dancing programs (Guilford County, $150,000), and a dropout prevention program for toddlers (Moore County, $86,500) is not easy. I mean, is the legislature patient enough to wait 10 years to see if those toddlers stayed in school? In all seriousness, I hope that John T. Hoggard High School in New Hanover County is able to use its $105,000 grant to raise its 87 percent graduation rate. It is only 17 percent higher than the state average, and I know that Hoggard can do better than that.
Technology. Will spending millions of dollars on computer technology and connectivity increase student achievement? That thought did not appear to cross the minds of subcommittee members, who recommend appropriating an additional $1 million for the North Carolina 1:1 Learning Project and an additional $4 million for improving school connectivity.
The 1:1 Learning Project would give a laptop computer to every student and teacher at eight pilot high schools, while school connectivity funding would “increase schools’ abilities to use up-to-date instructional technology.” If the legislature approves additional funding for these projects, students will have a much easier time cutting and pasting text from Wikipedia.
State-Funded Tests. The subcommittee recommends that the Department of Public Instruction eliminate writing tests for grades 4, 7, and 10, which would “save” an estimated $3.3 million. The legislature should use the funds to replace the writing tests with the California Achievement Test, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, or any other test that would actually allow parents to compare the performance of their children to students from other states.
Alternatively, the legislature could use the funds for an independent evaluation of North Carolina’s state testing and accountability program, the ABCs of Public Education. The proposed evaluation should include a close examination of the efficiency of the test development process, the quality and rigor of the test questions, the administration of the tests, cheating, the methods used to score and analyze the tests, and the cost of maintaining an in-house testing program compared to contracting out testing services.
These steps would begin to repair our higgledy-piggledy testing and accountability system.
Teacher Pay. For now, it appears that the General Assembly will not approve Gov. Mike Easley’s proposal to give teachers a 7 percent pay increase by hiking the cigarette tax. It’s a shame; I was ready to take up smoking … because I care about the children.
That disappointment aside, the legislature will likely approve a 3 percent raise to get teacher pay “closer to the national average.” Yet, when adjusted for cost of living, experience, and pension contribution, North Carolina’s adjusted teacher compensation is $55,731, which is $5,400 higher than the U.S. adjusted average compensation and ranks 10th highest overall. In the Southeast, only Georgia ranks higher.
The subcommittee also recommends spending $90 million for ABC bonuses and an additional $6.7 million on mentoring programs for first-year teachers. The state awards ABC bonuses to personnel at schools that meet or exceed growth expectations on state tests.
A better bonus system would reward teachers for the value they add to student learning, not entire schools for meeting growth standards on unreliable tests. Using ABC bonus funds, the state could award $5,000 bonuses to 18,000 teachers, or they could award a $90 million bonus to my wife, easily the best seventh-grade social studies teacher in the state.
North Carolina’s public schools should also commit to a more judicious use of mentoring funds. An independent evaluator should provide an ongoing study of school-based mentoring programs and the performance of teachers that receive mentoring funds. Based on these evaluations, the state should actively suspend mentoring funds used for ineffective programs or absentee mentors.
On the local level, school systems should tie a portion of the mentoring stipends to the performance of new teachers. In addition, school systems should guarantee outstanding mentors a duty or free class period that allows them to conduct meaningful observations and evaluations of inexperienced teachers.
As the budget works its way through the House and Senate, we will likely see legislators tinker with the subcommittee recommendations. Stay tuned to the John Locke Foundation for further analysis from the best in the business.