The state Board of Education remains at large at this hour, determined to do great harm to North Carolina youngsters. Members are armed with great power and are extremely dangerous.
Terry Stoops relates that this motley collection of strivers, hucksters, and hangers-on intends to donkey punch the state’s charter school network with absurd new teacher certification rules and fines.
A new policy expected to be approved next week would require 75 percent certification for teachers in grades K-5 and 50 percent in grades 6-12. The upshot will be to reduce the charter system’s ability to offer an actual alternative to the conventional K-12 public education in North Carolina while snagging more dollars for the status quo at the expense of the charters. Failure to hit the targets would trigger these penalties, Stoops explains:
Step 1 – The state reduces its allotment to the charter school by the amount of the salary of the Headmaster/Director of the school.
Step 2 – After a month of non-compliance, the state will reduce its allotment to the school by the amount of the salary of the highest paid non-certified teacher’s salary of the school.
Step 3 – Each month of non-compliance thereafter, the state will reduce its allotment to the school by the amount of the salary of the next highest paid non-certified teacher’s salary of the school.
Step 4 – If the charter remains non-compliant as of February 1, DPI will recommend revocation of the school’s charter at the end of the academic year.
Notice the actual performance of the students does not enter into this neat little penalty box. In fact, the students never matter to DPI. Hence its great and abiding evil.
