After last week’s release of education job loss statistics from the NC Department of Public Instruction (DPI), the News & Observer published an article with the ridiculous headline, “N.C. school cuts just keep coming.” On Sunday, the Charlotte Observer published an article on the same subject, but their article had a more appropriate headline, “School layoffs report confounds.”
In the Charlotte Observer article, reporter Ann Doss Helms explained, “But more than anything, the report designed to clarify the connection between budget cuts and education jobs illustrates just how difficult that is.” Actually, it is not a difficult task, unless you use a shoddy, vague, and confusing survey like the folks at DPI did. House Speaker Thom Tillis was being polite when he called the survey “rather unsophisticated.”
At this point, DPI should try to save some face and retract the entire report.
