RALEIGH – Raises for public school teachers and state employees are welcome, as is money to accommodate growing numbers of university students. So higher education leaders praised the 2018-19 state budget adopted last week by the NC General Assembly. The budget “builds on the UNC System’s strongest budget in a decade and provides an additional… READ MORE
Rural broadband can help close the “homework gap”
RALEIGH (May 29, 2018) – The NC Rural Center hears regularly from rural parents who park outside a local library or fast-food joint until 9 or 10 p.m. on weeknights – just so their children can get a WiFi signal and do their homework. “They’ve got a laptop…. They just don’t have that Internet,” declared… READ MORE
Show us your budget
RALEIGH – With the opening today of the NC General Assembly’s 2018 session, the focus will be on thousands of teachers from across the state rallying for better pay, supplies and working conditions – in short, for respect for public education.1 But more important will be the budget state legislators leave behind the day they adjourn… READ MORE
Teachers come first
RALEIGH – Gov. Roy Cooper’s recommended budget for 2018-19 heads in the right direction by prioritizing education over tax cuts and offering an average raise of 8% to North Carolina teachers, whose pay ranked 37th in the country in a recent survey.1 The two-year budget state legislators adopted last year included average raises for K-12… READ MORE
Teacher salaries: Progress, but a long way to go
RALEIGH – Maybe we’ve turned the corner. After average teacher pay in North Carolina sank to a rank of 47th in the country in 2013-14, state legislators deserve credit for raising average teacher pay above $50,000 to a national rank of 37th, according to estimates released last week by the National Education Association. Pay for… READ MORE
People without jobs, jobs without people
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – At a recent education conference sponsored by the NC Chamber, several speakers repeated a catchy statement to describe North Carolina’s skills gap: We have people without jobs and jobs without people. There’s little doubt education is the answer to both. Yet University of North Carolina President Margaret Spellings cited a poll… READ MORE
North Carolina’s professional pipeline
Even if you never enroll as a student, higher education touches your life. Think about it: Physicians, pharmacists, nurses, dentists, law enforcement, firefighters, EMTs – and of course, teachers – all make a difference in our lives. And they all need varying degrees of training. In many cases, that training comes from our public colleges… READ MORE
A budget that treads water
RALEIGH – At best, we’re treading water. An analysis of the budget state legislators approved in June reveals that when broken down per student, university spending is still nowhere near pre-recession levels and will essentially remain flat for the next two years. Yes, it’s true legislators provided more money than ever for our public universities… READ MORE
NC Chamber panel: Pre-K a worthy investment
DURHAM (Aug. 10, 2017) – Some of North Carolina’s most powerful CEOs understand the importance of early-childhood education and making sure students read well by third grade. But do the politicians? At the North Carolina Chamber’s 2017 Conference on Education, a panel discussion focused on the importance of early literacy in transforming the future workforce…. READ MORE
Just how unusual is the UNC Civil Rights Center?
CHAPEL HILL (July 26, 2017) – With a UNC Board of Governors committee poised to act next week on a proposal to forbid the UNC Center for Civil Rights to file lawsuits,1 just how unusual is it for a law school to have a civil rights center that engages in litigation? Critics of the center… READ MORE