The Assault on Public Education Continues in North Carolina
Down in North Carolina, a revolution is afoot. The revolution appears to have begun in 2008, when a little known senator from some northern state managed to get himself on the ballot as the nominee of one of the two major parties (the one that's not so popular down in North Carolina) for president. That was bad enough, but then he went out and won more votes than the guy he was running against that year. Even worse, he won more votes in North Carolina. And that, apparently, has had more than a few people in that state's government running scared ever since.
That senator, of course, was Barack Obama. His election seems to have set off a counterrevolution in the Tar Heel state that has unfolded like a tragi-comic farce: comedic in the sense that his opponents can't seem to stop falling all over themselves to undo any and everything that they think may have resulted in his election, tragic in the sense that so much of what they are doing had little to do directly with his election in the first place. Worse than that, much of what they're undoing had helped make North Carolina one of the most sought-after places in the country, a place that attracted educated people drawn to its varied geography, great barbecue, rich cultural traditions, and mild climate. Oh, and its reasonably progressive approach to things like education and public works.
Indeed, North Carolina used to be known as a "vale of humility between two mountains of conceit"—a sometimes surprisingly progressive state tucked between more haughty, and more conservative, neighbors to the north and south. North Carolina never boasted the most generous teacher salaries but it did offer opportunities for professional development in higher education, at a mix of top-flight public universities and top-flight private ones, too, and a growing economy centered on its famous "Research Triangle." As of 2013, North Carolina still had the largest number of teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards—there were more than 20,000 of them, almost 20% of the total number in the whole country. North Carolina was right on the verge of entering the 21st century. It seemed to be turning the page on a past that wasn't always a past to be proud of.
Instead, it appears that North Carolina's Republican government is determined to dial it back past the 20th century all the way to the 19th. Draconian voting laws intended to keep people from the polls, cuts to education funding, a relentless assault on teachers—none of it, apparently, is enough to get the legislature's foot off the gas. More than most states, North Carolina seems intent on making sure that no one like Barack Obama—and by that I don't an African American man or one-term U.S. senator; I mean a Democrat—ever wins the state's electoral votes again. Apparently that means dismantling anything that was ever done to support the common good.
And now comes this: news of another bill circulating in the legislature (Rebecca Schuman atSlate has already said most of what needs to be said about this, but I couldn't help piling on) that would require all professors in the state's public universities to teach eight classes per year. I'm not just whistling Dixie when I say this is a terrible idea that, if it becomes law, would have far-reaching consequences. This bill would not bring integrity to the state's university system, as its sponsors claim; it would water that system down, make it worse, put it on uneven footing with private colleges and universities, and drive those pesky college professors—who, if you didn't know it already, don't tend to vote for Republicans—all the way out of North Carolina for good. At the very least, it would get them off the payroll. As Jay Schalin, of the conservative Pope Center on HIgher Education Policy, put it: "The university system is not a jobs program for academics, and whether a bill reduces or increases the number of jobs is irrelevant." Did you know North Carolina Republicans were job killers, not job creators?
And kill jobs is what this bill would do—not just the ones held by those troublesome professors, but the ones created by their research—even as it eviscerated the state's public system of higher The Assault on Public Education Continues in North Carolina - The K-12 Contrarian - Education Week: