As lawmakers draw closer to finalizing a state budget that has drawn the most attention for how it may boost teacher pay and cut Medicaid, another battle is taking place at the legislature, too—over lowering standards for North Carolina’s growing number of charter schools. Following several years of significant changes lawmakers have enacted [Continue Reading...]
Date of voucher payout to families moved ahead of critical court hearing that will decide if program is legal Rep. Paul “Skip” Stam has long supported school vouchers and successfully co-sponsored legislation that would put 10 million taxpayer dollars into the hands of families wishing to send their children to private schools instead [Continue Reading...]
Senate leaders continue to propose cutting teacher assistants as a way to pay for a significant teacher salary bump, the first teachers have seen in years. While the General Assembly debates back and forth over the impact teacher assistants have in the classroom, there’s another factor in the equation that is getting far [Continue Reading...]
Lawmakers continued to face an impasse in budget talks this week by fighting over whether to ditch teacher assistants in the state’s elementary classrooms as a way to pay for teacher salary increases. Senate budget writers pitched a new plan on Tuesday that would still give teachers an 11 percent raise, as they [Continue Reading...]
On Tuesday, Governor Pat McCrory congratulated 450 teachers who gathered in Raleigh to be recognized for winning $10,000 bonuses in federal Race to the Top grant funds, at a time when the vast majority of the state’s 95,000+ have gone without raises and faced steep classroom cuts over the past several years. “As [Continue Reading...]
Governor Pat McCrory has previously upheld North Carolina’s decision to adopt the Common Core State Standards. Speaking to a group of business-minded folks at a state chamber of commerce meeting last summer, McCrory praised Common Core. “It’s not the standards that are bad; it’s the execution which must be improved here in [Continue Reading...]
Four superintendents from North Carolina’s largest school districts came together Tuesday to express their concerns about lawmakers’ 2014 budget proposals, as the legislature comes close to giving teachers the first significant pay raise they’ve seen in years – but not without asking them for significant sacrifices. “At a time when other businesses are [Continue Reading...]
House Speaker Thom Tillis (R-Mecklenberg) unveiled his party’s revised budget proposal for 2014, which includes an average five percent raise for teachers without forcing them to give up their career status – but he plans to pay for the teachers’ raises with revenues from the state’s lottery. “This budget has an average five percent [Continue Reading...]
Lawmakers who sit on the House Education Committee approved legislation yesterday that would endeavor to replace the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with another set of standards developed here in North Carolina. The proposed legislation, which hits the House floor this afternoon, would have two key effects: prohibit the possibility of engaging in [Continue Reading...]
North Carolina Senate leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham) released the details of his 2014 education budget yesterday, which would provide teachers with an average 11 percent increase in pay beginning this fall. But there is a catch — those who would like to take home the significant pay raise, which amounts to somewhere between [Continue Reading...]
The North Carolina Center for Advancement of Teaching (NCCAT), lauded by teachers and education advocates for its work in supporting teachers’ professional development, is yet again finding itself on the verge of elimination, as Governor Pat McCrory’s 2015 budget proposes defunding the Center by June 30 of this year. “The budget had a [Continue Reading...]
Gov. Pat McCrory revealed yesterday the full details of his proposed $21 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year, on the first day that the legislature returned to Raleigh for its short session. With the state facing a $445 million revenue shortfall this fiscal year and another projected $191 million shortfall next year, [Continue Reading...]
Gov. Pat McCrory announced Wednesday his plan to provide pay increases for all teachers and state employees, in addition to a number of education reforms that would play out beyond 2016. “It’s the heart of teacher appreciation week,” said McCrory at a presentation of his plan at North Carolina A&T State University in [Continue Reading...]
Ben Owens spent twenty years working as an engineer. During that time, he increasingly had a hard time filing jobs with properly skilled workers – so he chose to walk away from that career because he wanted to do something about it. “When I was an engineer, I had a hard time finding [Continue Reading...]
At the final hearing of a committee tasked with studying the Common Core State Standards, Sen. Jerry Tillman (R-Randolph) didn’t mince words when introducing proposed legislation that would seek to eliminate the Common Core. “If you adopt national standards, that triggers everything else,” said Tillman. “It triggers your test, it triggers your textbook, [Continue Reading...]
