Saving North Carolina’s Public Education System
How to Stop Those Who Would Betray the State’s Children and Future
As part of its work on public education in America, Civic Way is taking a closer look at one state—North Carolina. This is the 14th essay in Civic Way’s series on North Carolina’s primary and secondary education system (see the last essay). The author, Bob Melville, is the founder of Civic Way, a nonprofit dedicated to good government, and a management consultant with over 45 years of experience improving public agencies.
That is the difference between good teachers and great teachers: good teachers make the best of a pupil’s means; great teachers foresee a pupil’s ends. – Maria Callas.
Strategies for Reforming North Carolina’s Public Education System (cont.)
We have outlined the major deficiencies of North Carolina’s K-12 public education system and the most critical threats to its long-term viability. In this essay and those that follow, we present an agenda with several public education reform strategies for the consideration of all North Carolinians.
To ensure a sound education for all—the state’s constitutional duty—North Carolinians must work together. Not one party, but both. State and local leaders. Not just metro areas, but small rural towns and counties. A diverse state with divergent views must overcome its differences to build a public education system for everyone.
1. Protect Our Children’s Learning Environment.
In accord with the public education reform plan, the state must ensure that all Local Education Agencies (LEAs)—school districts—have sufficient resources to achieve the state’s constitutional obligations. These resources include staffing like teachers and bus drivers, facilities, vehicles, computers, supplies, textbooks and other instructional materials.
The NCGA and Governor should provide the requisite funding. The Board of Education, Superintendent of Public Instruction and Department of Public Instruction (DPI) should continue their efforts to execute the following strategies:
Upgrade the compensation system and project ten-year staffing, qualification and compensation needs by position and community (based on updated compensation studies and staffing models)
Recruit, hire, develop and retain effective administrators for every LEA and school, upgrade preparation standards[i], merge development programs[ii], adopt a competitive salary structure, fund incentives, and adopt more effective performance assessment and disciplinary processes
Make teacher compensation competitive (e.g., top ten nationally and top two regionally), increase recruitment and retention bonuses for targeted positions, offer stipends or paid leave for coaching, parental counseling and community facilitation and fund performance incentives
Recruit, hire, develop and retain a qualified, effective teacher for every classroom, increase job satisfaction (e.g., increase time for lesson planning), revamp the way in which teachers are certified and upgrade the teacher development system[iii]
Recruit, engage, develop and retain sufficient supplemental classroom resources (e.g., teacher assistants, academic specialists, substitutes, tutors, graduate students and parent advocates)
Recruit, engage, develop and retain sufficient bus drivers (offer recruitment bonuses, execute intergovernmental agreements with transit districts and increase immigrant recruitment)
Provide sufficient social workers, counselors, nurses and psychologists
Upgrade school facilities especially those offering community-wide services and the feasibility of integrating or sharing facilities with counties, community colleges and other local partners
Improve school safety (upgrade guidelines and fund joint ventures for smaller districts)
Upgrade instructional technology (e.g., academic applications and remote learning tools)
On a final note, DPI should develop a model parental engagement process for helping LEAs get their parents more constructively involved in the public schools. This process should include an effective mechanism for managing book challenges (e.g., review committees, time limits and appeals) and protocols for granting alternative academic assignments.
2. Continue to Upgrade Academic Programs.
The state should establish a panel of educational policy experts, educators and parents to work with DPI and the Board of Education to study instructional policy issues and recommend measures for modernizing the state’s academic programs. The panel should present an academic innovation plan to the statewide task force to incorporate into the broader education reform plan.
The academic innovation plan should address the following issues:
School calendar – the feasibility of migrating from the current K-12 calendar to longer school days or year-round schools or revising the law to make calendaring more flexible for individual LEAs
Academic standards – opportunities for strengthening accreditation, certification and instructional standards based in part of best practices from national associations and other states
Classroom time – potential strategies for increasing personal instructional time for individual students (e.g., classroom restructuring, tutoring and team teaching)
Instructional curricula – innovations in teaching core courses like reading, writing, math, science and social studies, other topics like arts, language and physical education, enrichment classes like Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate, tutoring and literacy classes
Technology – explore the feasibility of selectively using remote learning techniques for rural schools or academic specialties provided by shared teachers
Partnerships – assess opportunities for improving workforce training, postsecondary dual-enrollment and community-based tutoring partnerships as well as more joint ventures between LEAs and community colleges for high school students
Citizenship – best practices for improving and expanding civic and moral education instruction
This effort should commence with an inventory and assessment of proven instructional practices and innovations from other states.
In addition, the panel should address other academic issues like special needs and exceptional children, and after-school enrichment activities (e.g., creative writing, theater, music and sports). It may also decide to tackle instructional support matters like universal free meals, learning support items (e.g., free eyeglasses) and the integration of health, mental health and social services.
In this essay, we call for measures to improve the learning environment for children. In the essays that follow, we will offer other strategies that could be part of an ambitious public education reform initiative.