From Carolina Journal’s Dan Way:
More teachers are moving to other public schools in the North Carolina system than in the past, and that is the No. 1 reason cited for teacher turnover in 2012-13, according to a state Department of Public Instruction report prepared for the State Board of Education that will be submitted to the General Assembly.
The cover page of the report indicates it was scheduled to be presented to the State Board at its two-day meeting that opens Tuesday. A discussion of report had been on the board’s agenda and the report posted on the board’s website as recently as Thursday.
Sometime between Thursday evening and late Friday afternoon, the item was removed from the agenda and the report from the website. Without explanation, discussion of the report was delayed until the December state board meeting.
Critics of changes made to state education policy by the 2013 General Assembly and Gov. Pat McCrory — including an end to tenure, an expansion of charter schools, and a program allowing some low-income students to receive a tax-funded scholarship to attend private schools — along with the decision not to provide a raise for public school teachers, cited these changes as part of the justification one for the “Moral Monday” protests held at the General Assembly and across the state. The North Carolina Association of Educators groups and left-leaning groups have claimed that substandard pay and poor working conditions have driven up turnover rates.
But a closer look at the numbers does not back those claims. The state’s 115 school districts reported that 13,291 of 96,419 teachers employed left their teaching positions during the 2012-13 school year, for a 13.78 percent system-level turnover rate, according to the report. That compares to 11,791 teachers leaving their positions in 2011-12, when the turnover rate was 12.13 percent.
