Terry Stoops

Bertie County Schools is laying off staff to address multi-year budget deficits. According to an article published in the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald, the district will eliminate 21 support positions over the next two months. The school board blames past superintendents, auditors, the Local Government Commission, and others for the…

Local salary supplements are funds added to the state-mandated base pay of school district employees.  Because the supplements are local dollars, school boards may distribute the funds as they see fit.  Some districts choose to use their local supplement to address staffing needs and priorities, while others distribute them broadly. …

Currently, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction has been revising the education standards for the state and are seeking public comment on the proposed K-8 math standards. The public comment period ends on April 20. As others have pointed out, these standards tweak the flawed Common Core math…

I received the video posted below from a friend who lives in Iredell County.  Coddle Creek Elementary School is part of the Iredell-Statesville Schools.  Surely, teachers and administrators can find ways to advocate for an issue without using children as political pawns. On a separate note,…

The challenge of learning from others’ mistakes by Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality April 13, 2017 Dear State Legislator: First let’s get the obvious points out of the way. I get that your constituents love small class sizes. Certainly, no rational teacher will tell…

According to Gallup’s “Americans’ Views of President Trump’s Proposals and Actions” poll, Americans agree with Trump on family leave, infrastructure, tax cuts, school choice, and, to a lesser extent, military spending increases. Require companies to provide family leave for parents after the birth of a child: 81 percent…

Matthew Springer, Lam Pham, and Tuan Nguyen from Vanderbilt University recently published “Teacher Merit Pay and Student Test Scores: A Meta-Analysis,” which examines “reported findings from 44 primary studies” of teacher merit pay programs.  They concluded that the “presence of a merit pay program is associated with a modest, statistically…

Holden Beach, N.C.: Ice-cream-loving squirrel nibbles on bite-sized cone…