Against All Odds

The reform movement that has swept the nation has left many educators in the classroom grasping for straws.  The nation has been digging itself out of the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression and there just seems to be no money left.  State budgets have been balanced on the backs of public education for the past several years.  Educators have been asked to do more with less each year.  The federal government provided one time relief in 2010 with the EduJobs Act.  Many state governments and local education agencies took this money and spread it out over the past two years.  Now the EduJobs well has run dry and once again state governments are forced to make drastic cuts in order to balance their budgets.  

In North Carolina, and across the country, partisan politics have left all children behind.  Currently, North Carolina ranks in the low 40s in per pupil spending; it is now behind Mississppi!  Last year, Governor Perdue wanted to extended the penny sales tax in order to restore the cuts to education, but the newly elected GOP General Assembly stated that no taxes would be extended.  This year Gov. Perdue proposed a 3/4 of a penny sales tax to restore the cuts, but again partisan politics won over education.


Year after year, educators have been asked to do more with less.  As the years pass it seems as if educators have been blamed for the financial crisis that has crippled the economy.  Year after year, students still enter schoolhouses believing that someone will be there to steward their futures. 


Over the past several weeks, high schools across the country have celebrated their graduation ceremonies.  Students have been paraded in front of friends and families celebrating thirteen years of a system that hopefully prepared them for the coming obstacles.  These newly minted graduates looked to their haggard educators to consistently hit home-runs for them.  They counted on their teachers to prepare them for the Flat World they are now entering.  State governments have let them down pandering to special interests, but their teachers daily struggled to prepare them for success.  As the class of 2012 exits and the class of 2013 begins their march towards the future educators are now in the bottom of the ninth with two strikes and can barely hold onto their bats, but know that they must continue to produce magic because the each student is counting on them despite the lack of funding provided.  Will they once again hit one out of the park?