John Hood’s column of April 22 serves up an unusually disingenuous and deceptive helping of John Locke Foundation hogwash.  He gives the impression that critics of the Republican attach on public education are ignoring research supporting the Republican agenda.  Let’s look at the facts.

Before the Republican “revolution” the public school system was as good, or better, than most states in the area.  The graduation rate was on par with national averages.  Student test scores also were comparable to the national average and better than the average for southern states.  The education system worked well  anddid not need any drastic “reforming.”

The first thing the Republicans did was cut the education budgets by 10% for the entire educational system from kindergarten through the universities. Now that is a great way to improve quality.  The cut was “required” because the Republicans cut the penny sales tax that supported education and instituted other tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy.  The results is that we now rank 48^th in funding per student.  All the surrounding states invest more in public education than North Carolina.  We are also now near the bottom of the heap in terms of teacher salaries.

Hood correctly states that money is best spent on “high quality teachers and educational materials.”  However, we now rank 46^th in teacher pay with the average teacher now making about $3,000 less than before.  This makes it hard to hire and keep quality teachers.  The state has lost more than 17,000 jobs in public education with about 6,000 of those being teaching positions as a result of Republican policies.  Even the textbook fund has been cut by 80%.  Instead of acknowledging this “empirical evidence,” Hood focuses on questionable studies on the impacts of teacher’s aides.

The Republican war on public education also includes the promotion and funding of charter and private schools.  They are intent on siphoning off even more money from public education to fund the charter and private schools.  Some of these have a religious orientation so your tax dollars may be going to promote a religion you do not agree with. The Republicans initially called the subsidies for charters and private schools a “voucher” but now they are going to call such funding “grants” because that sounds more positive and polls better than voucher.

Republicans have no fewer than 10 bills pending that in one way or another attack public education.  For example, one would lift the cap on class sizes, and others shift funding to charters or otherwise weaken the public education system.

I urge any parent or grandparent with children of school age in North Carolina to go to the website www.publicschoolsfirstnc.org to get the real facts on education.  Also, www.ncpolicywatch.com and www.ncleg.net provide factual information about legislation.