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It's all about the kiddos

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Tuesday, 25 June 2024

Written by Margaret Dickson

If you suspect North Carolina’s children are under siege, I agree with you.
First, there is the ongoing and relentless attack on public education by the current brain trust at the North Carolina General Assembly.
Somehow millions of American parents, including an alarming number in our state, have signed on to the notion that public schools are irrevocably broken, despite the reality that almost 9 out of 10 Tar Heel students are indeed in public schools. This belief has given license to a rogue legislature to decrease support to public schools and give tax dollars paid in by you and by me to private, often religious, schools with next-to-no oversight.
Some of this shifting of public funds comes under the banner of “parents’ rights.” Of course, parents have rights but so do everyday, hardworking taxpayers who want and expect public education to give their children, grandchildren, and future North Carolina workforces the tools to make our state’s economy thrive.
Then there is the all-out assault on North Carolina educators, who are leaving their chosen profession in droves. AXIOS reports that 11% of NC teachers bolted during the 2022-2023 school year, up almost 4% from the prior year. Money is certainly part of the departure equation. North Carolina ranks 41st in teacher pay, down from 38th the year before, and 36th the year before that, according to the National Education Association. The World Population Review ranks North Carolina even lower, ahead of only West Virginia, Mississippi, and South Dakota.
Inadequate pay is bad enough, but it is hardly the only issue teachers face. The Assembly, an online, non-profit newsletter, recently ran a piece written by one of those departing teachers, Lisa Williams, now working in the private sector. Williams taught in public high schools for more than 2 decades in Kentucky and New Hanover County, teaching about 3500 students. Salary does not appear to be her major concern. Instead, she wrote this.
“This year, I started carrying a bulletproof backpack to work. I kept my classroom door locked all day….When we were called into lockdowns, I stood behind the classroom door so I could greet anyone who might be on the other side, because, while I might go down, I could buy time for my students to run.”
And, this.
“This year, I worked an average of four hours after school every night and at least 10 hours during weekends….It wasn’t because I enjoyed the work or because I am a perfectionist. It was so I could meet the demands of the local school board policy stating that every paper should be graded within one week of its due date.”
Also, this.
“There’s a mentality surrounding teaching right now that involves gaslighting and misinformation….They ask, Isn’t that what you signed up for? Welcome to the myth of the American teacher. Most of us are not trying to become stumps in exchange for abuse and martyrdom, but at the core of our being, a voice of conviction poses the question we all have to answer: What about the kids?
“Kids are losing the most in the battle over public education.”
How anyone thinks degrading public education is a forward-thinking policy is beyond me. North Carolina valued and protected public education through most of the 20th century but beginning around 2010, we seemed to forget that we all benefit from an educated and productive workforce, and we all suffer when we do not have one.
It becomes a 5-alarm fire when we also realize that United States students lag behind their peers across the developed world. According to PBS, students in 29 other countries have higher math scores than American 15-year-olds and US scores in reading and science rank 20th and 23rd respectively.
Clearly, North Carolina needs to get its education house back in order and fast.

Excellent Public Schools Act: Science of Reading bears fruit

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Tuesday, 18 June 2024

Written by John Hood

Over the past two years, North Carolina had made critical investments in the future of our state.
No, I’m not talking about highway projects, or university R&D, or the private investment in new companies, locations, and workers facilitated by the legislature’s pro-growth tax and regulatory reforms.
These are, indeed, valuable instances of capital formation — of physical, intellectual, and human capital — but today I refer to a different piece of legislation.
In April 2021, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the Excellent Public Schools Act. Gov. Roy Cooper signed it.
Among other things, the bill requires that literacy instruction in the state’s public schools be based on the science of reading, a term of art that describes a research-based consensus in favor of “phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics and spelling, fluency, vocabulary, oral language, and comprehension.”
After decades of “reading wars” between competing camps of educators, researchers, and policymakers, those advocating phonics as an indispensable tool for decoding words prevailed in both scholarly debate and practical results.
When the state of Mississippi rewrote its instructional approach to emphasize the science of reading, for example, its performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress dramatically improved — and not just in reading.
According to the most recent Urban Institute analysis of NAEP scores, Mississippi fourth-graders ranked second only to Florida in average reading scores adjusted for student background (which is the proper way to assess the value added by schooling).
The year Mississippi passed its science-of-reading bill, it ranked 40th in the subject. During this same period, Mississippi also rocketed to third in math scores, behind Florida and Texas. After all, learning how to read proficiently opens the door to learning other subjects.
North Carolina’s reading instruction was never as bad as Mississippi’s. Indeed, as I’ve often pointed out, our public schools have ranked high in value-added performance for many years (our fourth-graders rank sixth in reading and seventh in math, according to the Urban Institute analysis).
Nevertheless, our students have much to gain from the 2021 reforms. So far, we appear to be implementing them effectively. EdNC’s Hannah Vinueza McClellan reported last week that some 44,000 elementary school teachers have been trained in North Carolina’s LETRS program (which stands for Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling).
“We know how critical literacy is to student success,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt, “and I’m thankful for the passion and commitment of North Carolina educators to help our students achieve their goals.”
Early evidence suggests the new approach may be bearing fruit. From 2022 to 2024, there was a marked decline in the number of students rated below the state’s benchmark for reading fluency, accuracy, and comprehension. Minority students made especially strong gains.
It’s far too early to declare victory, of course, but it’s worth pausing for a moment to consider how this promising change in policy came about.
Nationally and within our state, education researchers and policy analysts across the spectrum were willing to follow the evidence on reading instruction wherever it led, even if it challenged their preconceived notions. Republican and Democratic lawmakers did the same — the Excellent Public Schools Act passed unanimously in the Senate and by a 113-5 margin in the
House — and appropriated $114 million to train teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators in the LETRS program.
North Carolina’s turn to the science of reading occurred within a national context. We were willing to learn from the practical experience of Mississippi and other jurisdictions.
Our legislation has, in turn, become a model for other legislatures to follow. That’s how public policy is supposed to happen.
And just to finish the thought: as promising as our initial experience seems to be, there are no guarantees. We may find that the early improvements in reading performance don’t persist into later grades. We may discover flaws in the LETRS training that require administrative or legislative tweaks.
Public policy is, itself, a learning process. Let’s all strive for fluency and comprehension.

Editor’s Note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His latest books, Mountain Folk and Forest Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

Higher exports would aid Carolina economy

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Tuesday, 25 June 2024

Written by John Hood

While some economic metrics continue to offer good news to North Carolinians, others point in a different direction. U.S. agricultural exports, for example, fell by $17 billion last year and appear to be on track for another decline of about $8 billion or so this year.
As U.S. Sen. Thomas Tillis and 21 of his colleagues pointed out in a letter to key Biden administration officials, some fluctuations in export markets are inevitable, the result of currency flows and international factors beyond the control of any one country or set of policymakers. But this two-year decline in ag exports sticks out like a sore thumb.
Tillis and the other farm-state senators argued it was “directly attributable to and exacerbated by an unambitious U.S. trade strategy that is failing to meaningfully expand market access or reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade.”
For decades, they pointed out, leaders of both political parties had made it a priority to expand overseas markets for agricultural products and other goods and services.
They “accomplished this feat through negotiations of actual free trade agreements, removal of technical barriers to trade, and holding our trading partners accountable to their commitments,” the senators wrote. They urged U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to pursue a similar course today.
They’re right, of course, but such policies are a hard political sell at the moment. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump have a history of indulging populist opposition to trade agreements. Partly following their lead, an increasing number of Democrats and Republicans in Congress seem less inclined to vote for international agreements that lower barriers to our exports abroad (and also, by happy necessity, lower prices for consumers here at home).
Whatever the consequences may be for other sectors of the economy, a continued turn away from free trade will wreak havoc on agriculture, forestry, and related industries that rely heavily on export markets.
According to North Carolina State University economist Mike Walden’s latest analysis, the production and sale of food, fiber, and forestry products generate more than $100 billion in economic impact, accounting for about 16% of our state’s gross domestic product. The sector employs nearly one of every five North Carolina workers.
Our largest ag exports include meats, tobacco, soybeans, grains, and fresh vegetables. North Carolina firms constitute America’s largest exporters of broilers and tobacco. We rank third in pork exports, seventh in cotton and wood-product exports, and ninth in the production of softwood lumber.
The livelihoods of many North Carolinians — and thus the economic and fiscal health of many North Carolina communities — depend on the expansion of international trade, not its contraction.
In an American Enterprise Institute study published last fall, AEI fellows Barry Goodwin and Vincent Smith observed that when the administration of former President Trump imposed tariffs and other restrictions on America’s trading partners, they retaliated by erecting barriers against our exporters. Instead of repealing his predecessor’s policy mistakes, President Biden has doubled down on them.
Chinese restrictions against imports of soybeans and other agricultural products were especially painful. As Goodwin and Smith point out, Washington responded not by ratcheting down trade tensions but instead by doling out federal dollars to agricultural enterprises.
“Many of these subsidies were poorly targeted,” they write, while even deserving farmers would have been better served by restoring their export markets, not paying them subsidies.
Are there legitimate concerns about trading sensitive technologies and defense-related products with the Chinese, the Russians, and others who wish harm on America and our allies? Certainly. Tillis and the other senators aren’t denying the need to take national security into account when fashioning trade policy. What they’re calling for is a default policy of free trade with free people in pretty much anything, along with opening export markets around the world for such products as pork, wood pulp, and soybeans.
That would be good for America. It would be particularly good for North Carolina.

Editor’s Note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His latest books, Mountain Folk and Forest Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

Revisiting Grimms' tales: The Musicians of Bremen

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Tuesday, 18 June 2024

Written by Pitt Dickey

Tired of Presidential election year hijinks? Is your guy a Saint and his opponent the Anti-Christ? Boring! That’s all the politics you will get from this column. Now, back into the Dark Forest of Grimms’ Fairy Tales to enjoy some musical animals.
If you want politics, retire to your news silo of choice to wallow in outrage.
Once Upon a Time, there was an old donkey. No, I am not referring to Joe Biden. This is a story about a donkey who reached the end of his working life. Donkey had worked in a mill hauling heavy bags of grain for decades. Like any carbon-based life form, he eventually became too old to work. His owner stopped feeding him. Donkey was old, but he wasn’t stupid. He realized the glue factory loomed on the horizon. Unwilling to be a part of Elmer’s Glue, Donkey ran away into the woods. His post-retirement plan was to move to Bremen to become a musician.
Pretty soon Donkey ran into an old dog. Dog was panting heavily and sadly. Dog explained he was too old to hunt. His owner was planning to kill him like Old Yeller. Donkey asked Dog to come to Bremen to play the drums where musicians were paid union scale. Dog, with no better option, agreed to go.
A bit farther along they found an aging cat who appeared “as if he had lost a pound and found a penny.” Sad Cat explained he was too old to catch mice. His mistress was planning on drowning him so he ran away. Donkey invited Cat to come along to be their lead singer. Finally, they came to a rooster sitting on a barn roof crowing at the top of his non-avian flu-infected lungs. Rooster explained that his mistress was going to cook him for supper so he was getting his last crows in before the final curtain in the stew pot. Donkey invited Rooster to come along to be a backup singer in Bremen.
Does this sound like the plot from the Wizard of Oz yet? It is a quest. Our buddies kept walking into the forest until dark.
They were all tuckered out, plopping on the ground to sleep except for Rooster. Rooster flew to the top of a tree and spotted a light in the forest. He alerted the rest that there might be a house nearby where they could rest. They quietly slipped up to the house. Donkey peeked in a window. The good news was there was a table filled with good things to eat. The bad news was there were a dozen robbers chowing down inside on the vittles. What to do? It was a conundrum.
They came up with a plan. They would all simultaneously sing, bark, crow, and bray to make a frightening racket. Their plan worked. The robbers were so scared they ran out of the cottage into the woods to escape the monster making the noise. Our heroes then went inside to eat like there was no tomorrow. After stuffing themselves, they fell into a food coma.
The robbers had been watching the house from the woods. When the light went out, the bravest robber, Lefty, snuck up to the house and went inside. Cat woke up with his eyes glowing in the dark. Lefty thought Cat’s eyes were smoldering coals and struck a match to Cat’s nose to start a fire.
Cat reacted in pain, yowling, scratching, and spitting at Lefty. Lefty tried to vamoose but tripped over Dog who bit him on the leg. Donkey kicked Lefty hard in his backside sailing him out the door. The rooster crowed loudly scaring Lefty even more.
Lefty told the robbers they could not go back because there was a witch in the kitchen who scratched him with her nails, a man with a knife who stabbed him in the leg, and a dude with a club who kicked him so hard “I think he broke my fundament.”
The robbers left the cottage forever. The four friends decided to give up their budding musical career to remain in the house. The Grimms ended this story by writing: “They’re living there still, and as for the last person who told this story, his lips are still moving.”
What have we learned today? As usual, very little. Rest assured no animals were harmed in the writing of this story; only one dim robber named Lefty. You may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but he can take a bite out of crime. Possibly that Old Friends are the Best Friends. As Mitch Miller used to sing: “Be kind to your friends in the swamp/ For a duck may be somebody’s mother.”
You are now free to roam about the country.

(Illustration by Pitt Dickey)