DPI

I am thrilled at the initial success of North Carolina citizens of all political inclinations in transforming the process of curriculum development in the state. But I am troubled. Why? Because the few people who persist in advocating, “let the DPI do its job” are liberals like me! It’s clear that their understanding of the issue boils down to sound bites, and stems from a knee-jerk reaction to a story brought to national attention by FOX media. Whose fault is it that Fox had a better read on the pulse of its constituents than the liberal media?

It doesn't take much digging to see North Carolina's dysfunction in the area of charter school policy. Caught in the crossfire of partisan politics, the kernel of a good idea has languished between free-market extremists who seem eager to dismantle public education altogether, and left-leaning politicians who fear that any crack in the dam will unleash a torrent of angry teachers. Both sides should reset their priorities.

I'm a relatively new resident of North Carolina, as I'm going to graduate school here. But yesterday a friend of mine who's from North Carolina, Durham in fact, said something that just boggled my mind.

We were talking about how people can't change what symbols mean in the minds of others, and my example was that even though some people might say that the Confederate flag is a symbol of states rights, to the majority of people its a symbol of slavery. I then quipped that the people who say that the Confederate flag is a symbol of states rights and not slavery just don't get it, because its a symbol of the states' rights... to own slaves, and that thats what caused the Civil War.

She responded that slavery was not a major cause of the Civil War, and the reason that I thought slavery was the major cause of the Civil War was because of my Northern education.

Bev Perdue must have been reading my post from Sunday. She wants us all to know that "The buck stops with me." That is, even with North Carolina's convoluted educational hierarchy, the governor is the one responsible for successfully educating our children.

What about our Constitutionally mandated and elected Superintendent of Public Instruction? Well, Perdue says "I don't believe an elected statewide official is a figurehead and I resent that on behalf of June Atkinson and the voters of North Carolina." That's not what she her actions indicated. Today she suggested creating a new position of Chief Executive Officer for the Department of Public Instruction. When there's a CEO, what's the Superintendent supposed to do? Perdue has asked her to lead a special commission on career development and workforce issues.

Sure sounds like something you ask a figurehead to do...

Today's N&O frontpage features an issue that I've been meaning to write about for a while... The wacky way North Carolina manages our public education system.

In our strange system, responsibility for education is distributed across at least seven levels. The titular head of our education system, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, has the least power of anyone.

The North Carolina Public School Forum lists this as one of the top 10 education issues of 2009. It's one of those complex issues that has never really been addressed because none of the power brokers have a vested interest in making it better. You can guess at who might suffer from their inaction.

Here's my take on how it works, and what we can change.

The House and Senate Education Appropriation Committee distributed a version of the Conference Budget this afternoon. Our public schools received less funding in the Conference Budget than was included for public schools in the House or the Senate passed Budgets. The Conference Budget is $33.9 million less than the Budget passed by the House for public schools. The Conference Budget is $10.2 million less than the Budget passed by the Senate for public schools.

Our Dept. of Public Instruction latest version of the Algebra 1 End of Course Test, much like past versions, involves the reading of over 2500 words just to read the questions. That is the equivalent of reading Poe's Cask of Amontillado. Only about 18-20 of the 80 questions were true math questions; those would be questions that have instructions like solve, evaluate, and factor. The rest of the questions are either a paragraph with numbers and formulas scattered therein or a large matrix that takes up most of a page.