Inputs, Outcomes, and the NC Association of Educators

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Welcome

Thanks to the many readers who weighed in on last week’s CommenTerry, a brief discussion of the State Board of Education’s prohibition on public comment periods. Public comment is always welcome in this forum.

Bulletin Board

• The John Locke Foundation is sponsoring a Citizen’s Constitutional Workshop on Saturday, March 19, from 11:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Lord Auditorium-Pack Memorial Library in Asheville, NC. Historian Dr. Troy Kickler and political science expert Dr. Michael Sanera will discuss "What the Founders and the State Ratification Conventions Can Teach Us Today." The cost is $5.00 per participant, lunch included. Pre-registration is strongly suggested. For more information or to sign up for the event, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.
• The John Locke Foundation and the Campbell Law School Federalist Society are sponsoring a lunchtime discussion, "Neighborhood Schools, Diversity, and the Wake County Controversy," with education experts Abigail Thernstrom and Richard Kahlenberg. The event will be held on Tuesday, March 22, at 11:45 a.m. at the Campbell University Law School in Raleigh. The event is free and open to the public. For more information or to sign up for the event, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.

• The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle and high school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/edu_corner for further information.

• You will find wisdom, knowledge, and purpose at our research newsletter archive.

CommenTerry

A soon-to-be-released report from the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) is getting a lot of buzz. According to a report by The News & Observer, when the NCAE releases it on March 18, the study will apparently show that North Carolina has lost teaching positions and is lower on teacher salary and per-pupil-expenditure rankings than three years ago.

If this is the extent of the study’s findings, dues-paying members of the NCAE should not be pleased by the report — but not for the reasons you think. If the purpose of the report is to lament reductions in personnel and spending, then the report will also show that the NCAE has been remarkably ineffective at convincing Democratic majorities in the legislature and Democratic governors to raise teacher salaries over the last two years. During this period, NCAE’s lobbyists have spent countless hours and diverted significant resources to ensure that proposed charter-school expansion and school-choice measures would not be heard on the floor of the state House or Senate. But they have failed to use their resources to persuade their closest Democratic allies to provide across-the-board raises for the state’s teachers.

This has not always been the case. Between the 2005-2006 and 2008-2009 school years, teachers received average annual pay increase of 4.2 percent, 8.0 percent, 5.0 percent, and 4.0 percent. In other words, North Carolina’s teachers received an average 21.2 percent increase over those four school years. Since the 2009-2010 school year, legislators that they supported have kept teacher salaries stagnant. Coincidentally, NCAE president Sheri Strickland began her term on July 1, 2008.

The context of the report is even more intriguing since the legislature changed hands in November. The NCAE must now lodge their complaint with a Republican legislature that, in most cases, has never received their support or been publicly criticized by the teachers association or both. The change is palpable. When Republican state Senator Bob Rucho recently commented that he is not inclined to pay attention to NCAE missives, he was not suggesting that he does not care deeply about teachers and public education. He does. Instead, Senator Rucho understands that there is more to supporting public education than blindly marching in lockstep with the NCAE and their allies, as his Democratic colleagues have done for decades.

Of course, there is more to this issue than just politics. I hope that the NCAE study will generate a healthy policy debate about inputs, outcomes, and educational productivity.

In an editorial recently published by the N&O, an editor dared to bring up the issue of outcomes. The editor wrote, "And by the way, so far as achievement goes, the state’s dropout rate is improving and test scores are going up in some places." If this is true, then the loss of inputs, namely personnel and funding, had limited effect on outcomes. Indeed, recent achievement gains make the NCAE argument a tough sell. In order to validate their complaint, they need to show that the levels of staffing and funding are detrimental to student achievement. We cannot predict the future, but historically, funding and personnel increases have not necessarily produced higher academic outcomes in North Carolina or nationally.

An exclusive focus on inputs, such as teacher pay and per-pupil expenditure, is tempting because it is easy to measure and understand. Not only that, but it is an American tradition. Researchers from a left-of-center think tank, the Center for American Progress, recently argued, "In many ways, the issue boils down to the [United States] school system’s long-standing focus on inputs instead of outcomes, and states for many years were reluctant to even outline what students should learn before graduating from high school" (p. 9). They point out that accountability measures such as curriculum standards and assessments have started to change the conversation for most Americans, but if the NCAE’s recent report is any indication, we have a long way to go.

We should resist the other extreme — ignoring inputs at the expense of outcomes. Both deserve equal time, and one way to do so would be to speak in terms of educational productivity. Ulrich Boser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, recently published a groundbreaking report that does just that. Boser’s report, "Return on Educational Investment: A district-by-district evaluation of U.S. educational productivity," is the first step in changing the conversation about our public schools. (See Facts and Stats below for results for North Carolina districts.)

Random Thought

Apparently, pork is no longer "the other white meat." Some have suggested new taglines, such as "Pig out" or "Getting high on the hog." My idea — "What’s for dinner? It’s Arnold Ziffel!"

Facts and Stats

Mailbag

In response to the mailbag comment included in your March 8 "Education Update" issue, it’s important to note that North Carolina’s ABCs accountability model and the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law require testing of students in the Occupational Course of Study (OCS).

These distinctions are important ones. Sometimes the federal government or other forces dictate the decisions made at the state level. Your readers would benefit from that information, in my opinion.

— Lynda Fuller, Information and Communication Specialist, N.C. Department of Public Instruction

Terry Stoops responds: Thank you very much for this information, Lynda. I agree that my readers will benefit from this information, and I always welcome information and opinions provided by NC DPI staff.

Education Acronym of the Week

ROI — Return on Investment

Quote of the Week

"I believe enormous opportunities for improving the productivity of our education system lie ahead if we are smart, innovative, and courageous in rethinking the status quo. It’s time to stop treating the problem of educational productivity as a grinding, eat-your-broccoli exercise. It’s time to start treating it as an opportunity for innovation and accelerating progress."
— The New Normal: Doing More with Less, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s Remarks at the American Enterprise Institute, November 17, 2010.

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