Winston-Salem Journal editorial

Gov. Bev Perdue isn’t helping her anemic voter-approval ratings by pushing some $1.5 billion in annual tax increases, but she is doing the right thing for North Carolina. This state cannot afford to cut public education to the extent that will be necessary without a tax increase of this size.

Approximately 3,400 teaching positions in grades 4-12 and all third-grade teacher assistants will be cut unless the governor and the legislature raise new revenue. Such cuts would be devastating to classroom instruction and to teaching as a career prospect for young people.

No one wants tax increases, but North Carolina must meet its obligations, and our children comprise our most important obligation. We owe them a strong education, one that prepares them for the day when they will maintain a strong economy that both supports their children and the current generation of adults who by then will be in retirement.

If the tax increase inadequately protects education, then the political leadership of this state will, in essence, be turning to our children and saying, “Sorry we couldn’t help you get a better education; we had other priorities.”

This is not acceptable, especially considering that the federal government, with its deficits, and state government, with its sizable debt load, have already placed a huge future financial burden on our children.
The state Senate has the better tax package, one that actually lowers some tax rates. The Senate wants to expand the now very short list of services that are taxed. This is exactly what North Carolina needs to do. It must get its tax system in line with the 21st-century service-oriented economy.

Opinion polling shows that North Carolinians also will support an income tax increase on those making more than $200,000 a year and increased taxes on cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. So long as individual increases are kept within reason, this makes sense.

House and Senate leaders are now negotiating differences between the tax increases approved by each chamber. They must move quickly, because the new revenue is needed by July 1.

There are those who say that the whole $4-billion budget shortfall should be covered by spending cuts. This is irresponsible. Even with the tax increases Perdue proposes, cuts will be made to education and to vital services for children and our most vulnerable citizens.

Prosperity will return some day. Let’s hope it is soon. When it does, North Carolina will need a modern tax system that will be better positioned to weather future economic downturns. The Senate approach is the wiser choice, but the most important thing, right now, is to raise enough new money to keep the schools functioning properly.

RALEIGH, N.C.  – The North Carolina Senate has narrowly approved changing the public school curriculum to teach adolescents about the use of contraceptives to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

The bill approved 25-21 on Tuesday added details about what seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade students should be taught about disease infection rates and the effectiveness of FDA-approved contraceptive methods.

The House now must approve or reject Senate changes.

The House has voted that schools teach two separate tracks – one focused on abstinence and the other on comprehensive sex education.

The Senate bill would teach all students about abstinence, then extend the course to cover contraception for students whose parents consent.

Gov. Bev Perdue continues her “Save Education” push this week with rallies in Wilmington and Greenville Monday, WRAL reports.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Gov. Bev Perdue will address a rally of educators, teachers and other concerned citizens about her education priorities as state budget negotiations proceed in the General Assembly on Wednesday.

The Raleigh event will kick off a statewide series of rallies scheduled for the coming week in Greensboro, Charlotte, Asheville and Greenville. More locations may be added in the coming days.

The first rally will take place at 11 a.m. Wednesday on the Old Capitol Building steps.

RALEIGH, N.C.  – North Carolina public school districts could start classes as much as 2 1/2 weeks earlier in a bill tentatively approved in the House.

The bill approved 77-41 Wednesday is the latest effort by state education groups to loosen a 2004 law requiring schools to begin no earlier than Aug. 25 and end by June 10. The measure would move the start date to as early as Aug. 8.

The original law has been defended by the tourism industry and parents who want to keep traditional summer vacations.

Bill supporters said districts should have the flexibility to decide when classes begin. Rep. Paul Luebke of Durham County argued it also would ensure exams end before Christmas break.

A final vote could come Thursday. Then it would go to the Senate.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Gov. Bev Perdue today appointed Reginald Kenan of Duplin County and Christine J. Greene of High Point, and reappointed Patricia “Tricia” Willoughby of Raleigh and Wayne McDevitt of Marshall to the North Carolina State Board of Education.

“These four appointees share my goal of educating every child to become a productive 21st century citizen and worker,” said Gov. Perdue.  “They also understand the importance of incorporating virtual learning into the basics of teaching and learning.”

State law requires that the General Assembly confirm the appointments of Kenan, Willoughby and McDevitt.  Greene does not need to be confirmed because she is fulfilling a vacant seat on the board.

Kenan owns a law practice in Duplin County.  He is a member of the Duplin County School Board, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the North Carolina Bar Association.  Kenan received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Guilford College and his juris doctorate from Campbell University Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law.

Willoughby is the executive director of the Office of the Governor’s North Carolina Business Committee for Education.  She has worked with high school reform and childhood obesity as a member of the National Association of State Board of Education Study Workgroups and is a member of the North Carolina Courts Commission.  She received her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her master’s degree in reading from Meredith College.

McDevitt is in business in western North Carolina.  He served as senior vice-president for university affairs for the UNC system and as chief of staff to former Governor Jim Hunt.  McDevitt has served on the board of the North Carolina Partnership for Children/SmartStart and the North Carolina Parent Teacher Association.  The Asheville Citizen-Times recognized McDevitt as “one of Western North Carolina’s 50 most influential people of the 20th century” in 1999.

Greene has dedicated her professional career to education, from working as a counselor at Ragsdale High School in Jamestown to serving as executive director of the Guilford Institute for Leadership Development.  She was vice chair of the North Carolina Standards Board for Public School Administrators and chair of the North Carolina Board for Licensed Professional Counselors.  In 2008, Greene received the Distinguished Practitioner Award from the UNC at Greensboro Department of Counseling and Educational Development.

The Board of Education supervises and administers the public school system and the educational funds provided for its support. The board has 19 members. The governor appoints 14 members.

RALEIGH, N.C. – A bill to allow North Carolina school districts to start classes each year as much as 2½ weeks earlier than what’s now allowed has hit a roadblock.

The House Commerce Committee narrowly defeated a motion Tuesday night to recommend the measure go to the House floor.

The bill would change the 2004 law requiring most schools to begin no earlier than Aug. 25 and end by June 10. Districts could start as early as Aug. 8.

Education groups argue districts should decide their own start dates. The tourism industry and parents oppose the change because they say districts want to erode traditional summer vacations.

The 13-to-14 vote doesn’t necessarily kill the bill. Sponsor Rep. Ray Rapp of Madison County hopes the motion will be reconsidered.

BUNKER HILL, W.Va.  – Embarking on a “listening tour,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan asked teachers, parents and students Tuesday how they would improve No Child Left Behind, the controversial education law championed by former President George W. Bush.

Duncan visited West Virginia, the first stop on a 15-state tour as the Obama administration prepares to try to overhaul the program.

“What do we need to do to get better?” Duncan asked about a dozen teachers and parents at Bunker Hill Elementary, a high-achieving school in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle.

President Barack Obama has pledged to rewrite the law, but he has been vague about how far he would go, or whether he would scrap it altogether.

“I don’t know if ’scrap’ is the word,” Duncan told reporters last week. “Where things make sense, we’re going to keep them. Where things didn’t make sense, we’re going to change them.”

Traveling through the rural terrain was a new experience for Duncan, a former big-city school superintendent in Chicago, where he was born and raised. In addition to holding forums where teachers, parents and administrators could vent, he visited a first-grade class to read the book, “Doggie Dreams” at Bunker Hill and ate lunch with fourth graders at Eagle Intermediate School in Martinsburg.

“Who’s the president now?” Duncan asked the first graders, one of whom correctly identified Obama. “Barack Obama, that’s important,” he said.

Duncan said little about the law Tuesday, preferring to listen to the concerns of teachers.

Special education teacher Lynn Reichard told him she works all year long to boost the self-esteem of mentally impaired students at Bunker Hill, only to see them fall apart over standardized tests.

“They feel so good about themselves, and then they look at a two-paragraph reading passage, and they know six words,” Reichard said. “I have one child here that’s a non-reader, and she’s going to have to take the test, and she’s going to cry.

“There’s just got to be another answer for that,” Reichard said.

The law does make allowances for different tests for severely impaired kids, but many don’t fall into that category.

Whatever the administration decides to do, it needs the approval of Congress, which passed the law with broad bipartisan support in 2001 but deadlocked over a rewrite in 2007.

Duncan gives the law credit for shining a spotlight on kids who need the most help. No Child Left Behind pushes schools to boost the performance of low-achieving students, a group that typically includes minority kids, English-language learners and kids with disabilities.

“Forevermore in our country, we can’t sweep those huge disparities with outcomes between white children and Latino children and African-American children, we can’t sweep those under the rug ever again,” Duncan said last week.

Yet Duncan has many criticisms of No Child Left Behind, and he has plenty of company. Opponents insist the law’s annual reading and math tests have squeezed subjects like music and art out of the classroom and that schools were promised billions of dollars they never received.

Critics also say the law is too punitive: More than a third of schools failed to meet yearly progress goals last year, according to the Education Week newspaper.

That means millions of children are a long way from reaching the law’s ambitious goals. The law pushes schools to improve test scores each year, so that every student can read and do math on grade level by the year 2014.

“What No Child Left Behind did is, they were absolutely loose on the goals,” Duncan told the Education Writers Association meeting in Washington. “But they were very tight, very prescriptive on how you get there.

“I think that was fundamentally backwards,” he said.

Duncan said the federal government should be “tight” on the goals, insisting on more rigorous academic standards that are uniform across the states. And he said it should be “much looser” in terms of how states meet the goals.

The education community is watching closely to see just what Duncan means by “tight” and “loose.” So far, the administration has offered few clues.

Since the law’s passage, students have made modest gains, at least in elementary and middle school, the grades that are the focus of No Child Left Behind. The biggest gains have come among lower-achieving students, the kids who now are getting unprecedented attention.

The story is different in high school, where progress seems stalled and where the dropout rate, a dismal one in four children, has not budged.

RALEIGH, N.C.  – A Senate panel has quietly approved separate bills telling North Carolina public schools to change how they teach sex education and to adopt detailed anti-bullying policies.

The Senate Mental Health and Youth Services Committee recommended the legislation Wednesday to the full Senate.

The sex education bill passed the House just two weeks ago. It would require schools to offer children in grades seven though nine one curriculum focused on abstinence until marriage and another with more about contraception. Parents would choose either one for their child or none at all.

The anti-bullying bill is opposed by conservative Christians who argue it would advance special protections for gay people.