Fitzsimon File

Dismantling the public school system has long been a goal of the anti-government zealots on the Right. They simply can't stand that the vast majority of the people still support public education, despite its problems. 

It is a government institution and their rigid holy free market doctrine doesn't allow much room for government institutions, no matter how much they benefit not only the people who use them, but society as a whole.

The attacks on public schools come in various forms. The anti-government folks fuel anger among parents about school reassignment in Wake County even though most of the reassignments are a result of enrollment growth and the ten schools opening to address it, not the county's wise economic diversity policy.

They promote unlimited expansion of charter schools even though studies show students at charters perform no better than their traditional public school counterparts and many perform worse.  They point to the academic success of one charter high school without mentioning that the school only accepts applications from students who have reached a certain level of achievement in math before they enroll.

There's always an appeal for school vouchers or tax credits dressed up in the rhetoric of freedom, when it's really a subsidy for parents already paying private school tuition that's far more then the tax credit proposed.

There is almost never a discussion of the undeniable role poverty plays in student performance. That would undercut the Rightists' crusades against other vital government services, like child care subsidies and affordable housing programs.

They fight attempts to increase funding for public schools while complaining about many of the problems in schools that are made worse by lack of funding. They attacks on school budgets usually for spending money outside the classroom, though the critics generally include funding for teachers assistants in the misleading claims of a bloated education bureaucracy.

But the anti-public school forces are nothing if not opportunists. They are now using the state's $3 billion budget crisis and scandals in mental health and the probation system to attack public education.

And the criticisms have moved from complaining about administrative costs to questioning the wisdom of past increases in teacher pay. The Raleigh News & Observer's contributing anti-government columnist Rick Martinez weighed in Wednesday saying "the last thing North Carolina needs is another governor promising us a world-class education system to prepare our kids for the 21st century."   The last thing?

Martinez rightfully calls for more investments in the probation system and mental health services, but he doesn't want to raise revenue to pay for them. He'd rather stop "throwing big money at teachers," people he says who "rarely walk into a classroom of more than 25 students and have the summer off."

Apparently the state has been wasting money by giving small raises to public school teachers in recent years, bringing the starting salary to $30,000, roughly the same as an office assistant according to a 2006 salary survey.

A teacher with 15 years of experience in the classroom makes the lofty sum of $41,000, less than an entry level accountant trainee in many areas, according to the same survey.

Not too long ago, even the folks on the Right agreed that a teacher is the key to a child doing well at school. You'd think that market worshippers would propose a high salary for the job to attract the best teachers. Not any more. Teacher pay is now just another misguided state program that can be cut to shrink the size of government and balance the budget.

The truth is teachers are still vastly underpaid for the job they do. Even with the budget crisis, North Carolina can continue to increase teacher salaries and make more investments in the probation system and mental health services by combining spending cuts with a responsible plan to raise new revenue.

That doesn't fit in the anti-tax, anti-government worldview of the Right.  They would rather make state officials choose between safety and a decent education for our kids. Let's hope lawmakers make a different choice, to ignore recommendations from people more concerned with adherence to an anti-government dogma than improving the quality of life for the people in North Carolina.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.