WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. David Price (D-NC) re-introduced legislation Tuesday to help retain public school teachers.

“Teacher retention is just as important a goal – and perhaps a more difficult challenge – as teacher recruitment,” Rep. Price said in a press release.  “We can provide federal scholarships to encourage individuals to go into teaching.  But we need to combine that financial encouragement with preparation and enrichment programs to make it easier and more rewarding for teachers to stay in the profession and make teaching their career.”

About one-third of teachers leave the profession within five years of being hired, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS).  In some schools, the five-year attrition rate reaches 50 percent.  The National Education Association recently released an assessment revealing that American schools would need to hire an additional two million teachers during the next decade to keep pace with student growth.

Price’s bill, the Keep Teachers Teaching Act, would help schools cope with these pressures by providing federal grants directly to states or school districts to develop innovative teacher retention programs.  The Department of Education would identify the most promising teacher retention approaches, drawing from fully-operational programs as well as those in the pilot test phase, and share information about the success of the various approaches to states and school districts around the country.

“This problem won’t be solved by a cookie-cutter approach mandated by the federal government from above,” Price said.  “Federal support, however, can be a useful tool in promoting the most innovative and effective ideas at the state and local level.  My legislation seeks to identify and support the best programs, while encouraging other states to draw upon their counterparts’ experience.”

Effective programs to address this problem are already at work in school districts around the country, and many more innovative programs could be advanced if the right kind of resources were available.  Price highlighted the Kenan Fellows Program, administered by North Carolina State University, as an example of a model program that is already working and could be replicated in other states.  Kenan Fellows are public school teachers who partner with scientists and university faculty for two years to develop innovative math, science and technology curricula for use in classrooms all across North Carolina.

Price has introduced his teacher retention legislation as the House Committee on Education and Labor prepares to draft the upcoming reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as No Child Left Behind).  Last year, similar legislation introduced by Price was included in the Committee’s draft reauthorization, but the larger bill was not introduced before the end of the 110th Congress.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Larry Kissell was once an outlet for voters frustrated by manufacturing job losses in the 8th District.

No longer.

Now, North Carolina’s newest lawmaker must do more than talk about his district’s problems as he prepares to take office Tuesday.

The former world history teacher at East Montgomery High in Biscoe was a rookie politician when he first ran for Congress in 2006. He lost to GOP Rep. Robin Hayes by only a few hundred votes, and came back this past November to win their rematch.

This week Kissell moved into a Washington apartment that he says is almost the size of a dorm room. And the former millworker said he was moved by the sight of the Capitol, where he’ll represent voters from a district that stretches from Concord to Fort Bragg.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. – A Fayetteville teacher whose classroom comments about John McCain drew the ire of viewers who saw the remarks on YouTube says she has received a disciplinary letter.

The Fayetteville Observer reports that Diatha Harris also said an internal investigation cleared her of violating state law or Cumberland County Board of Education policy.

A Scandinavian documentary crew filmed Harris last May leading a classroom discussion of the 2008 presidential election. In the video, Harris tries to generate a class conversation about the presidential election by asking students whom they support. She says supporting either candidate is fine. When one student says Obama advocates ending the Iraq war, Harris asks students what they know about the conflict, then calls it “a senseless war.”

Another girl says she backs McCain because that’s who her parents favor. Harris points out that the girl’s father is in the military, and cautions, “the person that you’re picking for president said that our troops could stay in Iraq for another hundred years if they need to. So that means that your daddy could stay in the military for another hundred years.”

The camera returns to the girl’s face to catch her reaction. She seems to tense her mouth, but doesn’t otherwise respond.

The video aired in a documentary on Finnish television in November, and parts of it were posted on YouTube. Cumberland County School Superintendent Bill Harrison was deluged with calls for Harris to be fired.

Harris has apologized to the pupil and her parents, Army Staff Sgt. Robert Thompson and Angela Moore. But the parents have said they didn’t object to how Harris handled herself in the classroom.

Harris downplayed the significance of the written reprimand from Harrison. She has not made the letter public, and remains a teacher at the school.

“But I do want it out there that I did not break any board policy,” Harris said. “I did not break any laws.”

Harrison declined comment Sunday night because it was a personnel matter.

RALEIGH, N.C. – North Carolina’s three candidates for governor all have backgrounds in education, and each of them says they would make efforts to attract more teachers to the state’s classrooms if they’re elected.

Democratic Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue, a public school teacher in the 1960s, says the state has to do whatever it takes to get good teachers into rural school systems, and that includes paying them a supplement to get them there.

Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, the Republican nominee who received a teaching degree in college, would promote giving higher pay to teachers in high-demand subjects such as math and science.

Libertarian Mike Munger, a Duke University political science professor, said the state should do away with the bonus system entirely because it’s ineffective and replace it with a merit-based system.