As a former teacher, I was angry about the difference in "facts" from the teachers union and from the N.C. Legislature. I looked deeper into the current sound bites and protests and found in-depth explanations of new education laws and budgets at http://www.nchouse116.com.
This site provides links to original documents, including the actual laws that very much support good teachers, focus on excellence in the classroom and show the increase in education spending — quite different from current headlines and your readers' letters.
It also gives insight into the huge education debt and unemployment insurance mismanagement, among many other issues, inherited by the Republicans.
— Janet Burhoe-Jones
Swannanoa
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Per pupil spending has gone down in North Carolina since 2008, first to adjust to reduced revenue due to financial collapse caused by speculation by the banks, then to pay for tax cuts for wealthy people and corporations.
Republicans should claim their pride in cutting spending and cutting taxes. Why do their apologists insist on telling us it is raining, when what is trickling down doesn’t smell like water?
Say you have 10,000 people using a govt. program, and you spend $1 million per year on it. Your own figures show that next year you will have 11,000 people enrolled in that same program. You budget 1 million and 1 dollars for it. Anyone with a brain can see that you just slashed spending on that program by 10%. But you jump up & down & claim that no, no – you increased spending.
Welcome to NCGOP Deceptionville accounting.
Oh, and two other things. 1) There are no teachers unions in North Carolina. 2) Rep. Moffitt’s campaign website is not where I’d go for unbiased information. Even his pals Nathan Ramsey and Chuck McGrady took that propaganda off their own websites after Moffitt’s campaign/web manager pasted it on them.
http://nchouse115.com/
http://nchouse117.com/
I cannot stop laughing. Moffitt’s website as a source for “The Truth”? Kudos to Xpress for printing a letter from the Moffitt operation.
In the US, spending per student has increased almost 2 1/2 times, ADJUSTED for inflation, in the last 40 years. Of the top 50 things one could identify as contributing to our dismal educational quality, lack of funding doesn’t make the list.