Teachers in North Carolina are suffering under new laws that circumvent the democratic process and erode the morale of professionals who are charged with educating our next generation of students, but the latest move beats all.
To put this in perspective, North Carolina won a $400 million Race to the Top grant, which made them adopt the Common Core State Standards and tie teacher evaluations to test scores using a “value added model.” A report from the North Carolina Justice Center, here, says that more teachers left their posts last year than the previous year. Virginia has special programs in place to lure teachers from its southern neighbor to a more professional climate for educators in Virginia.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, the state legislature has recently:
- Played games with the class size limits, essentially eliminating limits
- Reduced the number of teaching assistants working in the schools
- Eliminated extra pay for teachers who earn master’s degrees
- Decided to fail some third graders who don’t score proficient on a reading test
- Removed several important caps on the number of charter schools
- Stopped the Teaching Fellows program, a beacon within the state’s education environment
Although these changes combine to make teachers, students, and communities unhappy, none of them approaches a contract that a new law might have teachers sign, if their districts go along with it. The contract is known as the “25% Contract,” after the percentage of the best teachers in each district who could be asked to sign it.
Right off the bat, this separates teachers and destroys any hope of building a collegial, collaborative environment in North Carolina’s schools, pitting teachers against each other in a competitive scenario, dividing them into groups that have certain privileges and groups that don’t. Then, although the method for selecting the “top” 25 percent of teachers is determined by each district under the law, I suspect most will use standardized test scores where available, scores from tests taken by students that have never been shown, after all these years, to measure teacher effectiveness with any validity at all.
And for the lucky 25 percent, signing the deal takes away their due process rights in exchange for a $500 bonus in the first year of a four-year contract and then, pending the state’s ability to provide funding for the program, an additional $500 bonus in each of the remaining years of the contract.
For example, a teacher making $38,000 who signs away his due process rights would receive $38,500 in total compensation, not including any stipends, in Year 1 of the contract, $39,000 in Year 2, $39,500 in Year 3, and $40,000 in Year 4. Note that Years 2, 3, and 4 depend on the availability of funding.
Some people have said this amounts to a $5,000 “raise,” but those stories are irresponsible and inaccurate. It’s a $2,000 raise over four years, but if a teacher doesn’t take the small bonus, the total amount of pay he or she receives over those four years will be $5,000 less. The “raise” itself in the last year, pending availability of funding, is only $2,000.
For more information about the law, see the FAQ page here, provided by the Professional Educators of North Carolina. If teachers take the deal, they will lose their due process rights (tenure) after the contract’s expiration in 2018.
Some superintendents have reportedly refused to take the offer to teachers. For example, members of the Guilford County Board of Education called the law reckless, harmful, and wrong at a retreat on Feb 1, the Greensboro News & Record reported.
Clearly, signing the contract will replace what is formally known as “career status,” or tenure, with contracts. Tenure is a protection of due process rights for teachers who are dismissed or demoted. A teacher with career status has a right to a hearing by a neutral third party. That third party goes through the evidence and determines whether or not the dismissal or demotion was based on sound evidence.
Using the hashtag #Decline2Sign, groups of teachers, led by the North Carolina Education Association, are campaigning to get teachers to refuse to sign these contracts.