On Nov. 5 Gov. Pat McCrory held the first meeting of his Teacher Advisory Committee. According to the governor’s website, he told the members they would work to shape his administration’s education agenda. 

I’m glad because he needs some help in that department. 

On his website, patmccrory.com, he outlines his views for education in the vaguest of ways. One section struck me worse than most of the others, sub-headed ‘Better Pay for Better Teachers’, he outlines his intended actions for improving North Carolina’s education system. It read: 

“Researchers identify teacher quality as the main in-school factor affecting students’ academic achievement. Therefore, the most important reform North Carolina could implement would be to keep the best teachers in the classroom. Some teachers are able to ignite a spark in a student that will have an impact on his or her learning from that point forward. North Carolina is blessed with many outstanding teachers who should be rewarded for the impact they have on the lives of our young people. Every student, every parent and every principal knows who the good teachers are. We will reform our pay system to reward teachers for the job they do instead of just the number of years they teach.”

With this method he so vaguely outlines, teachers would have to compete against each other to receive higher pay. I guess he has never heard of the phrase, “It takes a village to raise a child” because obviously his methods aren’t inspired by any aspect of it. In order for teachers and students to grow, the school they attend needs to be a comforting community, not a competitive war zone. Teachers should lend hands to other teachers and not care only about the students in their classroom, but each student who walks through the halls of the school. 

Louise Taylor of The News & Observer separates teachers into two categories: “Classroom teachers and school teachers.” She said that the classroom teachers are only there to teach their batch of students and go home but said that the school teachers invest more into their work and care deeply for all the students in the school. The “school teacher” mentality therefore translates to how the students in their classrooms are treated. She makes a valid point that I fully agree with.

McCrory’s approach is too harsh – he thinks competition will help our school systems, but when learning, students don’t need to feel threatened. Teachers should want to teach because they love it, not because of the increase in pay they would get if they trick their students into getting higher test scores.  

The pay is not worth the competition anyway because teachers get paid far less than they should already. The teachers would be fighting against each other for an amount of money that wouldn’t even help their salary by much. 

I believe that McCrory has his priorities in the wrong order. He shouldn’t be bribing teachers to do well with money, but instead implement things such as bonding activities in the schools among the teachers. But then again, I guess he is too busy working against equality and liberal arts degrees to really sit down and think about it.