It's Obama's fault N.C. is laying off teachers?

We know many conservatives don't like President Barack Obama, and far too many have settled into the habit of blaming him for everything that's wrong or going wrong in the country. But we were really taken aback by the John Locke Foundation's Terry Stoops, who in an article http://www.carolinajournal.com/jhdailyjournal/index.html blamed Obama for teacher layoffs in North Carolina.

Here's Stoops' reasoning: In 2009, President Obama signed the $814 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, which provided $100 billion for education, including more than $1.3 billion for North Carolina public schools over for two years. If N.C. school systems hadn't used that money to keep some teachers from being laid off over the last two years, the school districts wouldn't be in the position of having to lay them off now.

Go ahead. Scratch your head over that one.

Stoops, director of Education Studies for the Locke Foundation, noted that the Observer editorial board was part of the state and local media "in denial" about placing the blame on Obama: "A recent editorial in the Charlotte Observer explained, 'Actually, the federal government isn’t cutting funds. That money was a one-time boost to help struggling states during the recession. Policymakers knew those federal dollars would end after two years.' Observer editors echo the education establishment in North Carolina. Neither appears willing to fault the Obama administration for forcing school districts to eliminate hundreds of teachers and support staff positions.'

That's because it isn't at fault. It's clear that without the federal funds, the N.C. districts would have had to lay those teachers off anyway - and earlier. The federal funds were used to stave off the layoffs - layoffs due to state and local education budget cuts over that same period. And now, with N.C. lawmakers - primarily Republicans - proposing deeper education cuts for next school year, more layoffs are in the offing.

There's blame to go around for the economic forces that put the state in such dire financial condition. But layoffs - or not - of N.C. teachers? The blame lies with policymakers in North Carolina.

Perdue puts on budget boxing gloves

Gov. Bev Perdue is on a tear about the Republican dominated legislature's budget proposals. Perdue has been scooting all around the state with her "Education Works" tours to call attention to education cuts.

This week she got really riled up about the Senate Republicans budget plan, calling it a "charade" several times in a late afternoon press briefing Tuesday. In a new budget plan released Tuesday, Republican leaders presented a plan that deletes deep cuts to teacher assistants and keeps more money to hire 1,100 teachers for grades 1-3. The plan which has the backing of at least five Democrats was billed as one to withstand a possible Perdue veto.

Perdue said the plan, which Democrats say cuts $1billion from education, passes on huge costs to local school districts. It's just a "shuffling around of money," an attempt to "paper over the devastation to education and other important programs," she said.

She was joined in that assessment by Senate Democratic Leader Martin Nesbitt who called the plan "a direct assault on public school education." On top of that, he said the N.C. Department of Public Instruction says the cuts would eliminate 9,300 public school jobs, including teachers, teacher assistants and principals. It would also drop North Carolina to 49th in per pupil funding, below - gasp! - South Carolina and Mississippi.

Perdue wasn't done. On Thursday, she fired off a letter to GOP Speaker of the House Thom Tillis with some tart words about "budget gimmicks" such as passing on costs to local school districts by requiring the districts to make deeper cuts in their budgets. She also urged again maintaining three-fourths of a one-cent sales tax that is set to expire this year in order to avoid "endanger[ing] the education, health, and public safety for our citizens."

To buttress her point about the harm to school districts, she e-mailed news organizations her assessment of the impact of Senate budget. Mecklenburg County would have to make $39.8 million in state cuts next year, she said. Cabarrus County would face $8.4 million, Gaston County, $9 million and Union County, $11.5 million. Guilford County (Greensboro) would face $20.8 million in cuts, Forsyth County (Winston-Salem) $15.3 and Wake County, $42.3 million.

Dancing to stop standardized tests

The N.C. Senate might be all gung-ho about merit pay for teachers - it's part of the budget plan Republican leaders rolled out today. But a group of local citizens are dancing today against it at the Government Center Plaza - well, at least the standardized tests that are part of a Charlotte-Mecklenburg plan.

Mecklenburg ACTS is coordinating the protest today from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. before the CMS board meets tonight to discuss the budget and a motion to stop N.C. House Bill 546. The bill gives CMS the authority to create a teacher pay scale based in part on the performance of students on standardized tests. The bill would allow the system to bypass getting educators' approval of the change. CMS developed 52 additional tests for students this year to use for the evaluation. More are expected next year with a standardized test for every subject.

The idea has upset parents and others. Since there is no public comment period before tonight's school board meeting, Mecklenburg ACTS is asking people to protest by dancing to the Test Teacher Anthem found at http://www.mecklenburgacts.org/

Jones' budget a strong opener

Mecklenburg County Manager Harry Jones is on target with the budget he'll propose tonight. After years of cutting, Jones proposes reinvesting in essential public services, including education and libraries. That's vital to this community.

Jones' budget for 2011-12 won't make everyone happy, and county commissioners will debate it and change it in coming weeks. But Jones frames that debate the right way by giving Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools $26 million more than the county gave this year. That still leaves CMS receiving about $23 million less from the county than it did in 2008-2009. That despite the fact that CMS now serves more students, and more poor ones, in more schools than it did that year. With the state legislature poised to impose significant cuts on K-12 spending, CMS will still have to cut tens of millions of dollars from its budget.

Jones also reportedly proposes giving the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library system an additional $2.3 million. After drastic cuts last year, it's good to see Jones help the libraries. This should allow the library system to avoid closing several branches.

About three out of five taxpayers will pay more in taxes under Jones' proposal. But about two in five won't. And for those who do, tax cuts coming from the state should help cushion the blow.

The state, by the way, is driving a majority of the cuts at CMS. If legislators would agree to keep the one-cent sales tax that's scheduled to roll off, they would have more than $1 billion to spend on education and other needs.

-- Posted by the Observer editorial board

Deployments hurt military kids academically

A new RAND Corporation study finds children suffer academically when a parent is deployed for long months overseas. In North Carolina, with several military bases and thousands of soldiers deployed each year, that's troubling.

The study looked at more than 44,000 students in North Carolina and Washington State who had parents in the active Army or National Guard who were deployed between 2002 and 2008.
They found that children with a parent deployed for 19 months or more have lower test scores than their peers. They found that every month a parent is gone seems to hurt academic achievement a little. The impact on academics falls most heavily on middle school students. The problem is not statistically significant for high school students.

RAND was asked by the Army to examine the effects of parental deployments on children's academic performance as well as their emotional and behavioral well-being in the school setting. The academic problems were the same no matter the state or the academic subject. They were also consistent across rank, seniority, gender of the deploying parent, and gender of the child.

The report only looked at test scores and researchers noted that there are other "dimensions to academic success and learning not captured in this measure."

Among struggles identified for children of deployed soldiers? Homework completion, school attendance, and the impact of new household chores. School officials said they don't have adequate resources to help these children and their parents access the psychological and behavioral health services they may need to deal with the stresses of deployment.

Among the RAND recommendations? Include additional military resources to help kids with their homework. Increase transportation services to facilitate participation after-school activities. Provide better information to schools on deployments and better education about the military culture to educators and mental health professionals.

Read the report at http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG1095.html1

Students win Law Day essay contest

Each year, the Observer's editorial department partners with the Mecklenburg Bar Association to sponsor an essay contest in observance of Law Day. The winners this year were Katie Rivers, from Covenant Day School, who received $300 as the winner, and Arjun Gupta from Providence High in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, who was the runner-up and received $100.

This year's theme was "The Legacy of John Adams, from Boston to Guantanamo." The Boston refers to the second president's defense of British soldiers who fired on residents during the Boston Massacre. Guantanamo, of course, refers to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the military facility where terrorist suspects are being detained and where trials will be held. In the spirit and legacy of Adams, U.S. lawyers, including two in Charlotte, have provided defense.

Both Rivers and Gupta made impassioned arguments for Adams' precedent-setting defense. Rivers took note of the contradictions Adams presented. He is also remembered for signing into law as president the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. The laws were later repudiated as infringing on citizens rights by among other things making it a crime to criticize the government. But she noted that Adams' defense while a lawyer in 1770 of "the redcoats in the Boston Massacre set the standard for American lawyers to eliminate their personal biases in order to give every accused a speedy and public trial."

Gupta concurred: "With his defense of the British soldiers, John Adams gave us a model example of the rule of law: All are judged upon the same standard."

Congratulations to the winners, and to the dozens of other students who sent in great essays. Try again next year.

White House releases Obama's birth certificate

The White House this morning has released the president's long form birth certificate in an attempt to put the birther issue to rest.

In a statement today, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer writes:

"The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country. It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country. Therefore, the President directed his counsel to review the legal authority for seeking access to the long form certificate and to request on that basis that the Hawaii State Department of Health make an exception to release a copy of his long form birth certificate. They granted that exception in part because of the tremendous volume of requests they had been getting."

All we can say right now, judging from the recent comments and mail we've received, is, "Yeah, good luck with that."

You can download the certificate here:

Douthat on median income: I apologize (sort of)

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat is catching some flack for his recent New York Times column that said the median income for a family of four is $94,900. Say what?!! exclaimed several readers in comments to the column, which also was published in Tuesday's Observerl under the title, "Crushing America's promise." Some readers noted that the median household income reported by the Census for 2010 is only about $50,000 per year, half the figure Douthat used.

On his blog Monday Douthat took note of the criticism, "apologized for the confusion" and explained himself - though he didn't change his column or the conclusions he reached. Here's what he said:

A Note on Median Income
My column today includes an estimate, taken from this Congressional Budget Office report, of what a median-income family would pay in taxes over the next few decades under the “current law baseline” — a scenario in which tax rates rise fast enough to cover the budget deficit without any kind of entitlement reform. The median income figure the C.B.O. used (see Table 4-4 on p. 65 of the report) is $94,900 for a family of four, which (as a number of readers have noted) seems much higher than the usual estimates for median income in a four-person household. It turns out that I didn’t catch a crucial footnote in the C.B.O. document: “All income is assumed to be from compensation, which includes employment-based health insurance and the employer’s share of payroll taxes.” That is to say, the $94,900 in income includes the estimated value of the median family’s health care plan as well as their salary, which is not what most people think of when they hear the term “median income.” I apologize for the confusion.

Ummm. Got that?

Reduce dropouts, save millions in Charlotte

If the 11,200 who dropped out had actually stayed and graduated from schools in the Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord area last year, they could be generating $63 million more a year in earnings for this area. They also could boost state tax revenues by $6.5 million annually and be spending $46 million more on services and products annually.

That's part of the value the Alliance for Excellent Education put on reducing dropouts in eight metro areas of North Carolina in a report released Monday.

The Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord area logged the most dropouts of the areas examined - more than twice as many as the area with the next highest dropout figure (Raleigh-Cary with 5,200) - and thus had the most to gain from declines in the number of dropouts.

According to the Alliance, "the study demonstrates the gross increase in important economic factors such as individual earnings, job creation, spending and investment, home and auto sales, tax revenues, and human capital based on reducing by half the number of students from the Class of 2010 who failed to graduate on time."

“The best economic stimulus is a high school diploma,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia. “From the individual student to the bank branch manager, new car salesman, or Realtor, everyone wins when more students graduate from high school.” For the entire report and information on other states and other N.C. communities assessed - Greensboro/High Point, Fayetteville, Durham/Chapel Hill and Asheville, Wilmington and Winston-Salem - go to findings for North Carolina and the nation as a whole.