DPI’s Atkinson: teacher pay turning teachers off to NC. (Your beloved common core isn’t helping much.)
June Atkinson (D), our state’s superintendent of public instruction, is turning to that old saw that proves to be a winner for politicians again and again: Teachers need to be paid more.
Let’s see. A Democrat-controlled legislature paid no attention to her on this subject. Democrat governors Easley and Perdue paid no attention to her. What does that say about her effectiveness as an advocate for classroom teachers?
Ol’ June (yeah, she is old) says we’re experiencing a teacher shortage because the state ranks 46th nationally in teacher pay.
Though, June ought to consider the impact her beloved common core curriculum is having on teacher morale. I know plenty of public school teachers in my community — personally — who say that implementation of common core will be the last straw that pushes them out of the education field altogether. The only people loving this common core thing are the six-figure earning edu-crats in public school system central offices and university education departments around the country.
School officials have admitted that they will need significantly higher funding to handle the common core startup.
Hopefully the needed funding will not happen, thus slowing or in a perfect world stopping the implementation. I would expect our legislature to cave though, as the rant of “it’s for the children” rings hollowly out through the state.
If you believe all the rhetoric over the past years about teachers leaving the profession due to lack of pay then there are no teacher left teaching. Check it out. According the the media approximately 640,000 teachers have left the NC public system per year for the past 9 years all due to low teacher pay and benefits. I am not sure how many are left teaching. I know my children still have teachers but they obviously are the only ones.