Contributing to an informed citizenry, inside and outside the classroom.
Current status: A new fiscal year started July 1 without a new state budget. Step increases for the current salary schedule were adopted at the end of July, however this leaves out the most experienced educators on steps 15-24 and 26+ who each share a salary level. Full budget negotiations between the House & Senate... Continue Reading →
Yesterday the NC House released its proposed teacher salary schedule for 2024-25. Below is a comparison of the following: - last year's schedule - the current budgeted proposal for year 2 of our state's biennial budget - the House's updated proposal for year 2 - what teachers in 2007-08 could have put in their cart... Continue Reading →
Your kids are doing better than their end of year test allows them to be labeled. Both you and your kid need to know this. The deck is stacked against students in demonstrating their success because nearly all standardized educational testing is built around a curve designed to knock kids down rather than lift them... Continue Reading →
What more would your child's classroom have if the NC General Assembly had not deprived each NC classroom of nearly $100,000 since the Class of 2024 entered kindergarten? For the last few years on this blog I've calculated a Class of 20XX "student tax" to measure the state financial support denied to the current graduating... Continue Reading →
When many students show growth, it should be celebrated. If all students show growth, they should have an opportunity to be acknowledged as growing. So why does North Carolina use a contracted formula originally used in agriculture to plow public school student performance with misleading data? The system is not designed to label all students... Continue Reading →
Last year, Republicans in the General Assembly eliminated an income cap as an eligibility requirement to receive a private school voucher. This decision alone will funnel millions of dollars away from helping public schools in low-income communities and into the hands of wealthy families who never even considered sending their children to their community’s public... Continue Reading →
For part 2 of this Bursting the Bubble Sheet series, I’m going to zoom out to ensure I’m clearly communicating the forest of this project before diving into each tree: There’s an unfortunate fact pattern where deceptively portrayed K-12 data is being used to undermine communities’ faith in their local public schools as a marketing... Continue Reading →
Preface: Over a decade ago Rhett Carlson, a high school science teacher, reverse-engineered EVAAS - a K-12 test data translation tool created by NC-based analytics company SAS and used by the NC Department of Public Instruction. This program is modeled after one that was used in agriculture to increase plant growth and cull dairy herds... Continue Reading →
According to an NC private school voucher marketer, “All it takes is a fire and health inspection." North Carolina's General Assembly just opened the floodgates on what was already the least regulated private school voucher program in the country. Exposing fraud Public education advocate and school finance expert Kris Nordstrom released research in June 2023... Continue Reading →
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