Sen. Phil Berger on Education Reform

Reforms of Public Education Long Overdue (Sen. Phil Berger, President Pro Tem) From: The Greensboro News and Record

Most North Carolina Democrats would tell you they are responsible for public education in our state.

They would argue that their party has defended classrooms from Republican change. They would insist that they deserve, more than anyone, credit for the current system.

In many ways they’re absolutely correct.

Gov. Bev Perdue and Democrats who controlled the General Assembly for the past quarter century are indeed the architects of a system ranked near the bottom – No. 43 – in national graduation rates. Perdue and her colleagues have built an education structure that bases teacher pay on seniority rather than merit. They created a money pit, in which 23 percent of third graders advance despite an inability to read at grade level.

Under their watch, the public schools’ shortcomings strained our community colleges and universities, forcing them to spend millions on additional remedial courses and programs for students ill-prepared for post-secondary education.

And here’s the stunning reality, those same politicians are balking at reform. Incredibly, they’re defending the status quo.

The state Senate’s $19.3 billion budget, released last week, includes long overdue improvements to public education. They’re reforms that demand better results, and our plan reforms with less taxpayer money.

Already, some on the left are crying foul. Refusing to engage in a serious policy debate, their chief concern seems to be the amount of money the state spends, not what works and what doesn’t. They don’t seem to understand that public education should ultimately be a long-term jobs program for students, not short-term housing for bureaucrats and administrators.

If we want more children to succeed, we must fundamentally change the system, not blindly shovel billions more dollars at classrooms and hope for the best.

The past decade has shown throwing more money at a broken education system doesn’t improve it. In fact, it has steadily declined the more the state has chipped in.

Still, despite the scare tactics you hear daily from Raleigh, our reforms don’t gut North Carolina’s education funding. We’ll still be one of the region’s leaders in state spending on K12 education. Counties still have more than $250 million in federal money that can be used to prevent layoffs.

Our budget dedicates millions of dollars to develop a program to pay teachers based on performance, not just seniority.

We want the best teachers to rise to the top and the ineffective ones to improve or find new jobs.

The studies are clear; students are much more likely to graduate if they can read at grade level by fourth grade. That’s why we’re funding a new program that provides kids reading-intense third grade classes to develop proficiency.

Data also clearly shows smaller class sizes in grades one through three have a significant impact on student success. Our budget adds more than 1,100 teachers to classrooms in those grades this year and even more in the coming years. The goal is to fund a 1 to 15 student to teacher ratio. But since smaller or larger class sizes might be better in some circumstances with some teachers and students, we’re giving superintendents flexibility to change that at their discretion.

To keep counties from making drastic cuts or gouging their residents with higher taxes, we’re contributing more than $100 million in additional dollars to school construction beyond the governor’s proposed budget.

We’re also adding five days to the school calendar and creating more spots in early childhood education programs, such as Smart Start and More at Four.

Some have paid lip service to similar reforms over the past decade but have failed to act.

But we know an educated workforce is the cornerstone of a strong economy, and we’re not kicking tough decisions down the road.

When Republicans took control of the legislature this year, reforming education was one of our first orders of business.

The Senate quickly passed a bipartisan bill that lifts the cap on the number of innovative public charter schools – another measure opposed by guardians of the status quo.

There is indeed a promise of high-quality public education in North Carolina. But it’s a promise politicians have yet to keep. That changes now.