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Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Boomer with Attitude / News Surprise! Kudos for CMS board member Kaye McGarry
Posted By John Grooms on Wed, May 11, 2011 at 3:24 PM
It’s only fair. In the past, we have bluntly criticized CMS school board member Kaye McGarry. She is a hard-right conservative, whose vocal opposition to anti-bullying measures in schools, which she called a step toward implementing a “gay agenda,” led to her winning a couple of nasty Best of Charlotte “awards.” Fair is fair, however, and yesterday McGarry impressed us when she unexpectedly proposed a budget amendment that would have put Supt. Gorman’s controversial Performance-Pay Plan (PPP) on ice. We've written about this issue before and also want PPP stopped in its tracks.
According to the Observer story about the meeting, CMS is spending $1.2 million on performance pay this year. McGarry said, “When you are pouring this much money into something that's unproven in an economy like this, that is not the way to go, and it takes courage to say, 'Stop!'"
If only the rest of the board would have agreed, and set aside Gorman’s pet project, which, he is somehow proud to boast, would result in CMS having more official tests for students than any other large school system in America. McGarry was joined in voting for her dumping PPP by three board liberals — Tom Tate, Joyce Waddell and Richard McGrath — but the measure was defeated 5-4. Here’s hoping the board will reconsider later, and ditch Gorman’s performance pay plan. The only thorough study of such plans, by Vanderbilt University in Nashville, showed that PPP made no significant difference in student performance in that city.
One bright spot is that the majority of participating teachers in N.C. will have to approve of the PPP changes before the state will allow the plan to be fully implemented. At least that was what was supposed to happen. Now, state Rep. Ruth Samuelson, at Gorman’s behest, has proposed getting rid of the requirement that teachers approve the plan. In the meantime, though, teachers are being laid off, essentially to free up money to study a project that is already a proven failure elsewhere. (This must be Samuelson’s year for bad ideas, as she’s also the primary sponsor of the “Woman’s Right To Know” bill we tackled in this week’s column.)
So even though we will probably disagree again with Ms. McGarry in the future, kudos to her for bucking Gorman’s attempted PPP juggernaut, and, sincerely, better luck next time.
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