By Rachel Lewis Hilburn
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/whqr/local-whqr-975444.mp3
06-30-11 – The newly-passed state budget and The Government Reduction Act cut all funding for the North Carolina Teaching Fellows program. As WHQR's Rachel Lewis Hilburn reports, supporters of the program say this new legislation deals another serious blow to public education in the state. But state lawmakers say the historic $2.5 billion deficit meant every program was on the table.
The nearly 25-year-old teacher development program was intended to improve teacher effectiveness by giving scholarships to high-achieving high school seniors and then requiring them to teach in the North Carolina public school system for at least four years after graduation.
Nick Corak, a program graduate, says Teaching Fellows created a valuable professional support system for him.
"Probably the most rewarding thing as a teacher is to collaborate with other teachers It brings more ideas, more like lesson plan ideas, but also learning style ideas, how to reach more students, you get to talk about what works and what doesn't work."
By awarding scholarships to high-achieving high school seniors, the program improves teacher retention in public schools. And it provides a pool of entry-level teachers with more experience than is typical on the first day in the classroom.
But Senator Dan Soucek, one of the primary sponsors of the Government Reduction Act, says getting the state's finances under control required cutting some good programs that weren't absolutely essential.
"It is a good program. The challenge is when we have $20 billion dollars worth of good programs and $19 billion dollars worth of money, there are going to be some good programs that are going to have to be reduced or eliminated, and that's where the difficult decisions occurred."
Jo Ann Norris is the Administrator of the NC Teaching Fellows Scholarship program. She says this cut will have a measurable impact on the state's public education.
"Anecdotally, I can tell you that principals have long suggested that Teaching Fellows have an edge, if you will, particularly as a beginning teacher, and that they are highly sought after and highly recruited in our school systems in North Carolina." But getting state finances under control, says Soucek, meant separating the worthwhile programs from the critical ones.
"It really did get down to the difference between - anything that was poor, we got rid of. Anything that was critical, we kept. And then we got down to the things that were good and valuable but not critical. And those were the things we had to make the tough decisions on cutting."<
Governor Perdue signed the bill into law last week - formally ending the Teaching Fellows program by 2015.
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