About: Terry Stoops

The NCAE and its members are not happy about the largest teacher pay raise in state history. Surprised?  I’m not. Courtesy of the North Carolina Association of Educators Facebook page:  

Earlier this month, I reported that the estimated number of homeschoolers hit an all-time high of 98,172 students during the 2013-14 school year. The N.C. Division of Non-Public Education published the disaggregated data this week, so I examined estimated homeschool enrollment, by county, over the last five years.  We know that the total number ofContinue Reading

Mike Antonucci recently reported 2012-13 membership figures for state affiliates of the National Education Association, including the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE). The NCAE had one of the largest membership declines of any NEA affiliate in the nation.  Since 2008-09, active NCAE membership dropped by over 38 percent.  Total membership, which includes retirees, students,Continue Reading

Education Week provides an update on the status of federal Race to the Top grants in all states that received a grant, including North Carolina. The Race to the Top competitive grant program was tied to the adoption of Common Core, and North Carolina received its grant months after the State Board of Education adoptedContinue Reading

In response to a new Annie E. Casey Foundation report, The KIDS COUNT Data Book, News & Observer editors write, These findings, released this week and reported by WRAL, should disturb all North Carolinians. The report should bother the state’s leaders, Gov. Pat McCrory and those who run the General Assembly. And it must prompt some fact-findingContinue Reading

Of the nearly 2,300 teacher assistants employed in Wake County, WRAL just happened to interview Wake teacher assistant Josette Beller, mother of NCAE activist and Wake County elementary school teacher Kristin Beller (pictured below).  Both work at Millbrook Magnet Elementary School. This is just another reason why it is difficult to take WRAL’s coverage ofContinue Reading

According to Education Week, cursive is ready for a comeback.  The article offers an instructive anecdote. When an undergraduate in her university’s [University of Illinois] Rare Book and Manuscript Library asked for help with a manuscript she was reading, library director Valerie Hotchkiss assumed it was something difficult. An obscure Latin text, perhaps, or a letterContinue Reading

We’ve heard countless reports of teachers who flee North Carolina public schools for higher pay. But some of these teachers return to North Carolina after finding that public schools in their destination states were less than ideal.  These “boomerang” teachers rarely receive the kind of attention that their departing counterparts do, but they have anContinue Reading