Schools are bracing for a precipitous drop in student test scores coming down the pike next month — the result of a new, more rigorous curriculum and testing standards implemented statewide last year.

By Dawn Gilchrist-Young

Of the 120 or so 12th-graders I teach each year, about two-thirds have jobs outside of school. Of those two-thirds, there is a large number who work 30 to 40 hours a week. Their jobs range from bagging groceries and stocking shelves, to cleaning motel rooms, to chopping, splitting, and delivering firewood. As I included in my first column about the teaching I do at Swain County High School, the per capita income in 2011 was $19,506. For 2012, the projected income was $19,089. Of the county’s 14,000 residents, 3,000 live below the poverty level, and of those, almost 1,000 are children, including my students. For most readers, these are merely numbers, but for me, as a teacher, they are numbers that have faces.

I’ve always loved school. Consequently, I detest what the General Assembly is doing to education.

As a kid, I knew that looking forward to school each day put me in a minority. Maybe it was my parents’ influence. My dad was a high school graduate and the son of a textile mill foreman in Cheraw, S.C. He joined the Navy as soon as he could and got the hell out of Cheraw. My mom quit high school when she got married at 16 but earned her GED when she was in her 40s. I always felt that they both had high expectations for me — the youngest of three boys — from a very early age.

Growing up on the Isleta Pueblo reservation in New Mexico, 26-year-old Cody Grant could name off the tribes he descended from — Cherokee, two sects of Pueblo — but he didn’t know anything about them, except their names.

“For me, it was because culturally, I was lacking,” said Grant, who split his time between New Mexico and Cherokee as a child. “I didn’t place big stock in cultural values.”  

With each passing day, the first-person accounts of what life was like in the Smokies before Google, iTunes or even black-and-white television slip away. So, Beth Bramhall, a seasonal education ranger with Great Smoky Mountains National Park, decided to recruit the next generation to stem the tide of such loss.

The result was “Passing It On: A Digital Storytelling Project,” a year’s worth of old-timers’ stories collected and compiled digitally by area middle- and high-school students who were helped along by their teachers, park staff, local experts and folks from the Great Smoky Mountains Association.

Republican Gov. Pat McCrory is trying to temper disparaging remarks he made early last week about the value of a liberal arts education. He certainly needs to, and while he’s at it he should assure this state’s citizens that he understands the value of our university system.

In an interview with Bill Bennett — the education secretary under Ronald Reagan who has become a conservative pundit on political and social issues (and who has a degree in philosophy, by the way) — McCrory said the university system should be funded “not based on butts in seats but on how many of those butts can get jobs.” He also said we only need so many philosophy majors, and that the state should not continue to subsidize arcane courses that don’t lead to employment: “If you want to take gender studies that’s fine, go to a private school and take it,” McCrory told Bennett during the interview. “But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.”

After about 18 months of construction, the $1.5 million Swain County Regional Business Education and Training Center is officially open for business, or education, or training for that matter.

“This facility will wear many hats,” said Swain County Commissioner Donnie Dixon at a ribbon-cutting ceremony held last week. “It will be a meeting place. It will be things we probably haven’t even thought of yet.”

N.C. Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, spent much of his two-hour town hall in Haywood County last week addressing the topic of education.

Davis spoke to a crowd of more than 50 people in the historic courthouse in Waynesville. He didn’t shy away from taking on what has already emerged as a leading issue in state elections, a debate that has Democrats accusing Republicans of going too far in making cuts to education last year.

“I didn’t go to Raleigh and say, ‘Hot dig I get to cut education,’” he said.

Davis said the cuts were necessitated in part by the loss of federal stimulus funding, which was intended as a stopgap to help states through their budget crises.

“The state is also broke,” Davis said. “Schools are going to have to take budget cuts just like everybody else.”

The Haywood County School system has lost $8 million and more than 120 positions during the past three years.

Davis spoke out against Gov. Beverly Perdue’s proposal to raise the state sales tax three-quarters of a cent to help offset the education cuts. The senator received cheers when he mentioned Perdue’s decision not to run for reelection.

Davis also said he opposes another form of education revenue — the lottery. The state gives money earned from ticket sales and from unclaimed prizes, is distrubuted to school systems based on a set state formula.

The money supplants school funding rather than supplements it as it was intended, Davis said. Critics equate the lottery to a tax on the segment of the population that plays.

“I think it’s a stupid tax,” he said, adding that less than half — about 40 percent — is actually earmarked for education. The rest is used to pay out winnings and operational costs associated with running the lottery.

Bill Nolte, associate superintendent for Haywood County Schools, agreed that schools count lottery money as part of their budgets rather than as padding.

“We haven’t really gained teachers because of the lottery,” he said.

Nolte said legislators should reward schools that show improvement and growth and should consider giving public schools some of the same flexibility allowed to charter schools.

Charter schools are not subject to some of the same state and federal restrictions as public schools. For example, while unionized, tenured teachers tend to staff public schools, charter school instructors are often not unionized. Charter schools also tend to hire younger teachers who receive smaller salaries than their more experienced counterparts.

Private and charter schools survive with fewer resources and produce better test score, said Beverly Elliott, a Haywood resident who is part of the conservative local 9-12 project.

“The answer is not in more money. The answer is in wisely using the money we send to Raleigh,” she said.

North Carolina was recently ranked 49th in the U.S. for per-pupil spending.

Davis said it could afford to cut some of its upper level administrative positions within the state education department. He cited one job that pays six figures to a person who orders periodicals.

People trust teachers with their children, but the state does not trust them to buy the cheapest supplies, queried Davis.

“There are just all kinds of stupid regulations you have to deal with,” he said.

A grab bag of issues

Davis beat out incumbent John Snow, a Democrat from Murphy, two years ago and will face him again in this year’s election.

Following the redistricting, fellow Republicans handed Davis a harder re-election battle. The new district is comprised of the seven Western counties, meaning Davis lost the Republican stronghold Transylvania County and inherited the Democratic-heavy Haywood County.

During the forum last week, Davis spoke briefly about jobs, saying that the government should consider ideas that would benefit everyone. If a company cannot afford to keep a full-time position but could still pay an employee for 30 hours of work, the government could chip in the other 10 hours of pay a week, he suggested. The person would still have a job, the employer would still have an employee, and the government would foot a smaller bill, he added.

Among the mostly conservative-leaning town hall attendees’ other concerns were unfunded state mandates, the gas tax, gun rights and voter IDs.

Chuck Beemer, 71, expressed his worry that the state is requiring too much from counties without offering any funding solutions.

“If you can’t fund it, don’t do it,” Beemer said. “We can’t spend more than you have. You’ll be come the federal government.”

Davis reminded participants that he was once a Macon County commissioner and said that unfunded mandates were “the bane of my existence.”

However, as co-chair of the State and Local Government Committee, he said, he will be able to affect change for county leaders.

Beemer also asked Davis about the nearly 4 percent increase in the state gas tax.

North Carolina has one of the highest gas taxes in the U.S., which prompts some drivers to travel across state lines for cheaper prices, he said.

The tax rate is recalculated twice a year based on a formula involving wholesale gas prices — something the state should take another look at, Davis said.

“We are going to have to revisit that formula,” he said.

A couple of attendees thanked Davis for voting for the Castle Doctrine, which allows people to use deadly force against someone who breaks into their home. The law was spread to vehicles and workplaces last year. However, some did ask if more could be done to expand gun rights.

People should be able to protect themselves anywhere they go, Davis said.

Toward the end of the meeting, Mike Clampitt, a resident of Bryson City, asked Davis to work toward passing legislation that requires voters to display a photo ID before casting their ballot. This helps prevent someone from voting multiple times or voting using someone else’s identity.

“All I want is fair legal and honest elections,” Clampitt said.

Perdue vetoed a voter ID bill passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature this past summer, saying it disenfranchise eligible, legitimate voters.

When SmartStart, an early childhood education program, was launched in 1993, it was hailed nationally as a model for reaching children during those critical early development years before kindergarten. This, said educators, was the way to give kids a good foundation for lifelong learning.

The idea was to bring in parents, funnel funds into local programs and foster interagency cooperation to help develop children from birth to kindergarten.

And for 18 years, it’s worked, said Janice Edgerton, executive director of the Region A Partnership for Children, which administers the money for SmartStart in Western North Carolina. The idea has been co-opted by other states; North Carolina, it seemed, had done something right.

“It is so obvious now that these (early) years are so important, and on top of that you can track back the research about the success of programs that have worked with children in the early years. You can look back at North Carolina and see the difference now,” said Edgerton. “It’s crucial, and we have tons of evidence to support it.”

But now, as they’ve done in so many other places, the vagaries of the economy and politics are creeping in on SmartStart.

Starting next year, it will lose at least 20 percent of its funding, and possibly up to a quarter.

In Haywood County, cuts will be felt in a program called Parents As Teachers. It does pretty much what it sounds like — engages parents to take an active role in teaching their own babies, toddlers and preschoolers, teaches them what to look for and how to foster their development in the vital early years.

For Nora Doggett, it’s been an invaluable service.

She and her husband moved here from California last year, and that’s when she became a stay-at-home mom for the first time.

“It was a different experience and I didn’t know how to handle it,” said Doggett. But thanks to the Parents As Teachers workers, she now knows how to shepherd her two sons, ages 1 and 3, through the different developmental stages, and she’s got support the whole way.

“Right now, my son is three, and I know what he’s supposed to be doing, and I know what else to look for in him,” said Doggett. “Because they are with you along the way, they know how your children develop.”

Despite its success, the program is falling prey to the gaping budget hole that’s been looming over every state-funded agency for months now.

In SmartStart’s corner, opposing the cuts, are, of course, education advocates who point to numerous studies that list early-age development as key to success later in life. Joining them are the state’s Democrats, who may be in it for the children, but have also entered the fray to take shots at their counterparts on the other side of the aisle, who they say are killing off vital programs with a slash-and-burn approach to the budget and using services like SmartStart as political weapons.

On the other side of the ring are said Republicans, who counter that they’re not cutting arbitrarily, but necessarily. When there’s a funding hole as big as the state faced, something’s got to go, even if it means good programs are cut.

“There’s not enough waste, fraud and abuse in the government to fix $2 billion worth of deficit,” said Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin. “We just can’t continue going to the well and asking people for more money, no matter how good the program is.”

He and fellow Republicans went after SmartStart and its companion childcare program, More At 4, citing service duplication and administratively heavy structures. They cut $1 million from the administrative side, said Davis, but they needed more. They had to slice into programming somewhere. And SmartStart was that place.

Parents as Teachers in Haywood County already has 27 families on a waiting list. With the cuts, one of its three facilitators will be laid off, pushing even more families to the waiting list.

Parents as Teachers facilitators make home visits to evaluate children and show parents how to make learning toys from things they already have, like dry pasta and toilet paper tubes.

They also hold group sessions to connect families to one another and teach parenting skills that prepare babies for kindergarten.

And then there’s the connections to other families, other services in the community, which Parents As Teachers workers say are some of the most helpful things they do, especially in the Hispanic community.

Tania Rossi heads up the Latino Parents As Teachers initiative, and she said that’s been one of her greatest successes, connecting families to one another and encouraging them to get their children into early education.

“After six years in the Latino program, I can see a lot of difference,” said Rossi. “You see the impact with other families.”

Among the kids in her Latino program, the reading rates have shot up over the last six years, due partly to her efforts at educating parents.

SmartStart initiatives, however, include far more than Parents as Teachers.

They subsidize childcare for families in the region who can’t afford it, along with developmental services like reading assistance and speech therapy. SmartStart also works behind the scenes with programs like WAGE$, which offers small bonuses to traditionally low-paid preschool teachers, giving them incentives to stick with it.

Across the state, SmartStart funds dozens of initiatives with local partners to support toddlers and their families. Edgerton said she’s concerned that SmartStart won’t be able to continue offering the quality of services it does now.

“You’ve got to remember that we’ve had drastic budget cuts the last 10 years,” said Edgerton. “I’ve been here for 13 years at the Partnership for Children and we’ve had budget cuts for 10 years. So this is really taking a very lean budget and cutting it to blazes.”

Rep. Ray Rapp, D-Mars Hill, said he understands the direness of the state’s financial situation. And, he said, consolidating everything into a single birth-to-kindergarten model is an admirable pursuit. But deep cuts to the programs themselves, he said, would hurt the state’s children.

“It’s just not necessary,” said Rapp. “But you know, that’s where I think you get people that are in a straightjacket to their own political rhetoric. The bottom line on all of this is that we’ve got children who are at risk that need childcare and preschool education. I just find those kind of cuts unconscionable.”

For both teachers in the classroom and local administrators, this is shaping up to be the most challenging budget year in North Carolina history. At times like these, those of us who value a quality education system will be left to rely on the expertise of these professionals to do more with less. There’s simply no other option.

Last week we published a story detailing the budgetary challenges Haywood County schools will face in meeting the needs of its students as it deals with a loss of potentially $4 million. As most teacher assistants disappear, textbook money is cut drastically, and more local dollars will have to go toward buses — along with myriad other cuts — there’s just no need for hand-wringing.

Haywood Assistant Superintendent Bill Nolte, discussing the state House budget proposal and what might happen locally, summed it up very matter of factly:

“I don’t think we can, in good conscience, expect the (county) commissioners to come up with revenue that they don’t have,” said Nolte. “It’s impractical, in my professional opinion, to say to our county commissioners, ‘Hey, the state cut all of this; fund it.’ There is a worldwide economic crisis, and to our knowledge, our commissioners do not have new revenues that would make up for any state cuts to any agencies.”

What it comes down to is this: teachers, already strapped for resources and perhaps overworked, will be asked to do more with less. Especially those working with young children in first, second and third grades, where teacher’s assistants are destined to be cut. Haywood has a pot of money it will use to try to keep assistants in the younger grades for at least one more year, but in many counties those assistants will disappear.

This is happening at the same time money for the More at Four pre-K program is being cut, meaning many children will enter kindergarten less prepared.

As all the peripheral dollars are being cut, perhaps this is an opportunity for certified teachers  — those actually doing the hands-on work in the classrooms — to get more attention. Studies have shown that teachers in all those countries that perennially outscore us on all those standardized tests are treated much better than teachers in the United States. They earn more, are treated more like professionals, and more of the good ones tend to remain in the profession for longer.

For many years there has been teacher shortage in this country. That’s because it hasn’t been a career that enticed the best and the brightest. Anyone who wonders why Finland, Japan or Korea outscore us need only look at who becomes teachers in those countries. When we take the same approach, there’s little doubt many of our education problems will disappear.

Money will be tight in public education for years to come as we struggle through this recession. Perhaps it is a good time to focus on teaching and use the resources we have to entice the brightest among our college students to spend their lives in the public school classroom.