Tennessee's DCS Crisis Continues
North Carolina pushes toward merit pay scheme
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I’ve written a bit about the crisis in Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services. Children sleeping in offices for weeks at a time. Staff paid less than $30,000 a year. The budget and support DCS receive says a lot about the priority our policymakers place on children.
A new story from Nashville’s NewsChannel5 says that hospitals around the state are becoming “dumping grounds” for kids in DCS custody.
Children in state custody are spending months in Tennessee hospitals because the Department of Children's Services has no place else to put them.
The children have been medically cleared but tie up hospital beds that could be used by others, especially during times of heightened demand.
One child spent more than nine months — 276 days — living at a children's hospital after he should have been released.
Some hospital officials tell NewsChannel 5 Investigates they are becoming a dumping ground for kids DCS cannot place.
While the state has more than $2 billion in surplus revenue, no immediate action is being taken to address the staffing and facility crisis at DCS.
This has led to calls from some lawmakers for Gov. Bill Lee to move quickly to protect kids in state custody.
So far, Lee has not heeded these calls and instead has suggested he’s willing to wait until the next legislative session to devise and execute a plan to improve operations at DCS.
North Carolina Pushes Toward Merit Pay Scheme
North Carolina continues is quest to devalue public education and public school teachers. The state is moving to pilot a merit pay scheme that is essentially a solution in search of a problem. Rather than boosting pay for all teachers or investing more in public schools, the new pay scheme will place perverse incentives in front of educators - never mind that such schemes have not yet been proven to have a positive impact on student achievement.
What’s perhaps most insulting about this plan is what the blueprint’s authors consider high teacher pay:
The proposal establishes a pay range largely based on teacher effectiveness and responsibilities. An apprentice teacher, for example, would earn $30,000 annually; beginning teachers with degrees from one of the 55 state-approved Educator Preparation Programs would earn $45,000. That’s about $10,000 more than first-year teachers are currently paid.
Advanced teachers with “adult leadership” responsibilities, such as mentoring early career teachers, could earn up to $72,000. At present, the state salary scale for teachers maxes out at $52,680 per year.
Are they even serious?
Of course not.
Starting pay for teachers in North Carolina should be $60,000.
To suggest that “advanced” teachers with “adult responsibilities” be paid “up to” $72,000 a year is, well, insulting. It’s as if those coming up with these schemes have never been in a school and certainly never managed a classroom.
Oh, and here are some notes from education historian Jack Schneider on why incentive pay schemes don’t work:
Schneider suggests that reforms like the one being proposed in North Carolina are not working because they are based on a flawed premise.
That premise? Educators will respond when policymakers “turn up the heat.”
At the heart of this premise is the idea that educators are somehow “holding back” and only need the proper motivation to really “stand and deliver.”
I would challenge policymakers supporting this proposal to actually go to a school and teach for a week. The reality is most of them couldn’t last a single day.