A national education-reform group is launching a North Carolina branch to push for changes in teacher pay, tenure and evaluations.
The N.C. Campaign for Achievement Now, or CarolinaCAN, is the seventh state spinoff from 50CAN, a national group trying to create like-minded organizations across the country. CarolinaCAN will formally debut today with an analysis of shortcomings in student achievement, followed by a "Year of the Teacher" push for evaluations, pay and layoffs to be linked to student results and other measures of effectiveness (find the issue brief at the CarolinaCAN web site above).
"Our state has an honored tradition of education leadership," the introduction says. "But there is so much more needed to support and leverage our great teachers. Three reforms will help us get there: improving our statewide teacher evaluation system, reforming the state’s outdated tenure and layoff systems, and creating meaningful rewards for excellence. This brief outlines the shortcomings of the current evaluation, tenure, layoff and compensation policies, and proposes reforms to re-position North Carolina as a national leader in teacher excellence."
 |
| Kowal |
The CarolinaCAN site says the national group recruited "a group of independent, nonpartisan organizations dedicated to top-notch schooling to consider joining forces to help improve the education landscape" in North Carolina, with those organizations helping 50CAN "and local partners" create CarolinaCAN and launch "The Year of the Teacher." The N.C. founders, in addition to Public Impact and Project LIFT, are listed as KIPP charter schools in Charlotte and Gaston; the Charlotte office of New Leaders (recently joined by former CMS Chief Operating Officer Millard House); Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina; and Teach For America offices in Charlotte and eastern North Carolina.. Teach For America President Matthew Kramer chairs the 50CAN board.
In other states, including Minnesota and Rhode Island, CAN political action groups have pumped money into state legislative and local school board campaigns. Hoey says there's no plan for CarolinaCAN to get involved in this year's Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board race, though she says she's not in a position to rule anything out for a group that's just getting off the ground.
Posts
37 comments:
Millions of $ spent on testing and consultants. Heres an idea, give teachers back what they had or where promised 5 years ago:
ABC Bonus Money (never paid)
Dental Benefits
Vision Benefits
Health Benefits (80/20)
Cost of Living/Step Increase
Retirement Benefits
Teachers now do almost twice the work in the classroom for over $10,000 LESS. Good luck finding and retaining the best and brightest. Go hire another consultant to figure out why CMS cannot recruit quality and experienced teachers
Anon 6:40...Thank you!!! My paycheck has decreased over the last 3 years and I am being asked to do twice as much. As long as the higher ups play with the graduation numbers they will continue to smile and say everything is okay. Meanwhile we are on the front lines battling it out with no support.
Project LIFT
Project LIFT hands out tens of thousands in bonuses before any teacher steps foot in a LIFT classroom because they had been deemed a "quality teacher" beforehand.
Project LIFT has yet to provide any data showing how these "quality teachers" have performed.
CarolinaCAN, another cart before the horse program.... Project LIFT cannot and will not be replicated districtwide.
Hmm,...gates foundation..pushing testing...
Hmmm...tenure...don't have tenure here, career status is what we have...
Be wary.
Just stop with the groups, the spending money on what they should do and just bring Teachers current! A 12 year teacher being paid as a 6 year teacher and getting a 1% or possible 3% doesn't cut it!!!And bring the healthcare cost down. The largest state plan and teachers pay more than small companies do for coverage that sucks!!!
Great - a consultant who has 0 years experience as a teacher in public schools, telling us what's wrong.
Sure my dad may be a dentist, and I've been to the dentist every 6 months, but that doesn't qualify me to start working on people's teeth.
NC clearly does not value primary education as is evidenced by how poorly we pay and treat our educators. The fix isn't that difficult but weak/corrupt school boards and administrators rarely allow provided resources to ever reach to classroom. Here's what i would suggest:
1.) Test each child at beginning and end of year on core competencies.
2.) Measure teacher performance by growth shown over the course of the year versus some arbitrary target.
3.) Give top 10% of teachers showing most growth a very sizable bonus.
4.) Put bottom 5% on probation and if they are in bottom 5% within next 5 years they are let go.
You know, I think everybody at this point understands their position. It's hard to really give a crap when teacher's in NC are so poorly bad, however. Asking teachers to submit themselves to this kind of scrutiny while not even paying them a living wage is beyond absurd. Meaningful reform also needs to come with *meaningful reward*. 30k a year ain't cuttin' it for ANYONE. Pay teacher's a minimum 60k a year then people might not tune this stuff out so readily.
Reposted with proper grammar - I would hate my actual teachers to read the previous comment!
----
You know, I think everybody at this point understands their position. It's hard to really give a crap when teachers in NC are so poorly paid, however. Asking teachers to submit themselves to this kind of scrutiny while not even paying them a living wage is beyond absurd. Meaningful reform also needs to come with *meaningful reward*. 30k a year ain't cuttin' it for ANYONE. Pay teacher's a minimum 60k a year then people might not tune this stuff out so readily.
YOU DO NOT WANT ANYTHING BACKED BY TEACH FOR AMERICA!!! I recently left Tennessee after their former director was named Commissioner of Education in TN. He indeed has stripped tenure, pushed pay for performance, and even changed the pay scale from 20 step raises to 4. Does anyone think a person with a 5 week crash course in education be an effective educator? This is what TfA preaches.
I have no idea why anyone would enter education right now. The ideas this group(s) is proposing has been tried elsewhere and they do not make a difference. Why spend the extra money and place extra demands on teachers for results similar to what we have now. It is a crying shame. I am so tired of my child being tested to death for NO good reason. Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all pushed this scheme and it does not work. Time for something new besides teacher blaming.
NC teachers do not have teacher tenure. They have career status. All that career status does is to insure teachers are not fired over petty disagreements between local school administrators and a teacher. It is a less complicated process then it’s made out to be. Most company’s the size of CMS would have a similar process with an HR department. To be honest some company’s processes are more complicated and more “protective” of its workers.
Teachers can still be fired. This is not New York or Chicago. This is not a “big time” city. Charlotte teachers are some of the worst compensated teachers in America. I believe they rank 46th out of the 50 states. They do not have great pay with yearly increases. They do not have great in inexpensive healthcare (My friend’s wife pay’s almost $700 a paycheck to insure her family and its 70/30). They make payments toward their retirement. They teach in some of the worst environments possible.
The real reason teachers in CMS are not fired at the same rate as the private sector is “supply and demand”. We do not have a large pool of teachers to pool from. Who would choose charlotte as their first pick? After 15 years you make 46,000!! What a joke. If CMS fires a large number of teachers the classrooms would be without teachers. Didn’t CMS just win an award for being one of the best large urban school districts in the country.
I am as conservative as they come. I voted for Ron Paul twice but this has nothing to do with Unions or a protected class of workers. CMS is a bad market for teachers.
P.S, I like this Idea but it will never happen with the educrats in charge of this state. They will come up with some crazy algorithm that is convoluted and hard to understand. If they had to start paying all the teachers that showed growth, they could not afford a new panther stadium and the NASCAR hall of fame. I would only add student attendance. The student should at least have to show up to class.
1.) Test each child at beginning and end of year on core competencies.
2.) Measure teacher performance by growth shown over the course of the year versus some arbitrary target.
3.) Give top 10% of teachers showing most growth a very sizable bonus.
4.) Put bottom 5% on probation and if they are in bottom 5% within next 5 years they are let go.
CMS is a bad market for teachers.
Its sad when a two-teacher household where both parties hold masters degrees need to search around for side jobs just to make ends meet. NC is literally driving their best and brightest away. A good friend of mine who taught here for 10 years moved back to Ohio. There she is treated like a professional rather than us teachers here who are treated like whipped dogs. $38K a year here versus $67K in Ohio. You want to know where NC's best and brightest are going??? Now that sounds like a wonderful math problem that the Gates foundation can put on a standardized test.
Golly. I wish you guys were in charge. As a teacher all I would have to do is make sure my students score better on a test at the end of the year than the beginning of the year?
I can quit taking attendance? I don't have to keep records and do grades? I don't have to attend any teacher meetings after school? If you get scheduled in my 7:15 AM class I will tell you to show up at 2:15 after school. If you can't make it, then get your schedule changed and get out of my 7:15 class. No more IEPs? No more PEPs? No more advising clubs? No more field trips? No more coaching necessary to keep my job? No more bus duty? No more lunch duty? No more duties? No more recovery? No more reporting of recovery hours? No more mind-numbing training on whatever absurd thing is mandated by NCDPI, CMS, or judge? The only thing that matters is the score on the test at the end of the year?
It sounds too good to be true. Oh, it is not true. Oh, well. See you next August.
News flash!!
EVERYONE in America is now doing more work for less pay than they were before the economic meltdown.
And as if that wasn't enough, companies have started telling their full time employees that they are now part time with no benefits. (Thank you Obamacare)In addition companies are doing every thing they can to not hire new full time employees.
Any one who doubts this should look at the Gallup numbers on U6 unemployment and compare them to the Governemnt's bogus U6 numbers.
It is about time that government employees started feeling the pain.
10,000 dollars a year less and crummy benefits, this group does not need to waist there efforts hear. Teachers are already broken
Follow the money folks. Nothing new to see here except another front for the usual education "reformers" and those who make a buck off charters, etc. But Teapublicans while gladly soak up their advise and campaign bucks to screw the teachers.
Heath Morrison is not going to like the reform proposals of this group, except the idea of higher teacher pay.
Heath is against merit pay and tenure reform. This may be because he realizes the BOE is against education reform, and the BOE will decide Heath's fate.
North Carolina and Charlotte Mecklenburg schools is and always will be a place for teachers to come, get experience and move back to where they came from. The better paying sates usually want teachers to gain two years of experience before hiring. This smart, teachers usually do not stay in the profession for long. 5 years is the average, I think. I had a friend who graduated from a good school in Pennsylvania and wanted to stay and teach in Pennsylvania. A principal told her to move back to charlotte, teach for a couple of years and then re-apply.
Even if the top 10% of teacher where given a bonus in CMS, teachers would leave. The base salaries are too low.
11:32 AM,
Teachers have been feeling the pain across the country. There have been teacher layoffs, pay cuts. CMS has a pay freeze, 200 dollars was taken off teacher’s last check during the initial phase of the crises and benefits have been cut. A “government employee” is a broad term. If you look at the statics nationally, all people with degrees have been doing better “great recession”. Do not just read headlines…..
There is not tenure in CMS. Please look at the sates policy (It is on line) There is no argument here. This is not a big city with teacher unions. Please educate yourselves….
States, sorry.. Eating lunch :)
Julie Kowal, is an unwilling (she only knows what she has been told) hack for the privatization of schools, the same thing is happening in Brittan. Anything for a buck!! The global elite are now taking control of schools. Keep schools local!!! Local people with local control, Not county, not sate and sure as hell not country. Good luck America.
So your last comment on buying into a school board race is interesting. Might be better for them to join the Chamber and have influence via that avenue. Since they are already working with P-LIFT I will have to punt on this one. They are not really linked to CMS yet. I am sure they will be soon. I bet Bill Anderson is watching as they may take his Gorman money in the future.
I, for one, am tired of the witch hunt! I was going to teach 5-6 more years, well past my ability to retire. But the current "anti-teacher" atmosphere has pretty much made me decide to teach two more years and then leave. I will either apply to teach in another state and move, or find another job where my skills and my abilities are appreciated.
Low salary is one thing. I never thought I'd get rich in the teaching profession. Teaching is something I always wanted to do and have enjoyed. There's nothing more rewarding than seeing that "Aha moment!" on a students face when they get something.
And I, and a great number of teachers, have been loyal to NC. That's it Raleigh. Do you hear me? Loyal to the state that we live in! Loyal to our communities, loyal to our schools and to our students.
Loyalty no longer pays off.
To constantly hear people who have never set foot in a classroom bash and denigrate teachers, it has gotten to be too much.
When you have:
Taught a classroom of 40-45 students, trying to reach them day in and day out, then I'll consider you worthy to criticize my profession.
When you've spend $500 or more per year of your personal income on supplies and equipment for you classroom, then I'll consider you worthy to criticize my profession.
When you've stayed after school for meetings, school events or parent conferences while missing your daughter's dance recital or your son's band performance, then I'll consider you worthy to criticize my profession.
When you've been cursed by both students and parents alike with language that would make a sailor blush, then I'll consider you worthy to criticize my profession.
When you get to the school building in the dark and leave well after dark and realize you've put in 13 straight hours everyday that week, then I'll consider you worthy to criticize my profession.
When you've held a crying student in your arms because she's afraid to go home because home is a scary place, then I'll consider you worthy to criticize my profession.
When you understand the instinct to protect a classroom of students just like the teachers in Newtown CT did, then I'll consider you worthy to criticize my profession.
Add to that the ability to write a coherent lesson plan, deliver it in a meaningful and creative way, grade the papers of some 200 students that you see over the course of two days, write PEP's, IEP's, schedule conferences, take constant inservice training to be a better teacher, and manage all sorts of other record keeping then I'll consider you worthy to criticize my profession.
Oh, and add on another full-time summer job to make ends meet.
Then I'll consider you worthy to criticize my profession.
Two years. Then I'm out. Replace me with a Teach for American person. You'll get 5 years from that person. Then they'll be gone too.
But remember, you got more than 25 years from me.
If you dont Like It then Leave It
The BofE and Heath MOrrison do not give a damn about teachers. They care ONLY about the Federal Funds that they can get to come into CMS. Everything else is a sham!
Get another job, STRIKE, or shut up.
Your salary and benefits will NEVER change in this county and state.
9:28, 4:24,
For all your reasons, I second the emotions and left this year. Nothing changed from 1976 to 2013 except career (Non TFA) teachers walk as pariahs, a target by all political, religious, and "change" organizations. Administration and BOE became obsessed with ladder climbing, unresponsive, unqualified, and bowing to special interest and self serving projects. But you knew that.
I'm truly amazed that another fund sucking organization clone purports to save education from poverty by throwing an inexperienced overzealous
"expert' at this system. CMS has indeed killed both public opinion and employee morale. To any teacher considering North Carolina, especially a young person, the new education motto is "46th and sinking fast."
Read The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch. You will get where we have gone and what is coming. This book scares me. The sinister agenda of the educrats and their bedfellow corps is ruining education. I am glad to be retired and substituting. At least I can walk away at the end of the day for my pitiful compensaiton.
Principals and Administrators HAVE been getting bonuses on the backs of FRONTLINE teachers for YEARS!
Teacher of the Month might receive a $20 gift certificate if that.
STRIKE !!!
NC public employees are not allowed to strike according to some law that was created during segregation. The powers to be in NC where scared that public employees (especially teachers) would join the civil rights moment and protest.
I think it is time to start organizing. We can have “sick outs” march on Raleigh and protest during nationally televised events, like panther games, NASCAR hall of fame inductees’ ext… With social media, Blogs and post like this a movement can be started. I am a conservative by nature but I believe in the constitution and we have a right to protest and be heard. I am tired, I have student loans and a family to support. My degree does not lend itself to the privets sector. I am out of options and ready for Change. Look at the protest all over the world. If they can do it we can do it.
STRIKE!!!!!!!!!!
CarolinaCAN another reason teacher should stay away from NC…..
Good luck teachers :(
I think it is time to start organizing. We can have “sick outs” march on Raleigh and protest during nationally televised events, like panther games, NASCAR hall of fame inductees’ ext… With social media, Blogs and post like this a movement can be started. I am a conservative by nature but I believe in the constitution and we have a right to protest and be heard. I am tired, I have student loans and a family to support. My degree does not lend itself to the privets sector. I am out of options and ready for Change. Look at the protest all over the world. If they can do it we can do it.
Good Idea!!!!!!! We can have “teach NC Tuesday”!! No political affiliations, all teachers of all stripes with the common a goal. Tea Party teachers with occupy teachers and everything in between....
with a common goal, sorry
When I left the private sector 5 years ago to pursue teaching I thought I knew what I was getting into. My parents are teachers so I never expected to become wealthy but what I do recall was the general respect teachers were given for their service. I'm not interested in pay increases or bonuses. I can live with my salary but I have no tolerance for those who wish to attack the teaching profession. People like Julie Kowal attack teacher in states like NC because they are easy targets with little to no legislative support. Julie is not interested in supporting students or our community but instead hope to forge a political career or work for private corporations that sell tests, textbooks and consulting to States wasting mass amounts of public funding.
Educrats and Law makers want to blame our ills of society on someone so they have found the perfect scapegoat: teachers. The only problem is that in contemporary education teachers are not the ones making major decisions and our input is rarely considered. When the people who are actually educating your children become the ones who create education policy then feel free to blame them.
As a teacher, I don't want your money, awards or recognition. I simply want to be treated like the educated professional that I am and allowed to do the work that I am trained and fully capable to perform.
Teachers , Hold your board and super accountable. Any sane tax payer would. The current crew must be voted out as they have managed POORLY for the last 4 years. Joyce, Richard , Eric and Rhonda must be given walking papers.
Treated like a professional dont pay the mortgage young teacher.
I need to be paid a fair wage for my services. Losing tens of thousands these last 5 years, doing the work of 1.75 teachers and the total lack of respect from administration has left my little to no options.
I agree that protests and "sick outs" could have an effect. Fifteen years ago all teachers wanted was smaller class size. Now you have almost twice the class size with salary and benefits taken away never to return.
All political factions of teachers should unite in this "common goal of our common cores"
STRIKE !!!!!!!!!!!
Post a Comment