CommenTerry: Volume Three | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: These posts, by Dr. Terry Stoops, and aptly titled CommonTerry, appears courtesy of our friends at the John Locke Foundation. A full account of Dr. Stoops's posts, or mentioned as a credible source, are listed here in BCN.

    Much of my discussion will center on the table included in the Facts and Stats section of the newsletter. Take a minute to review it.

    Welcome back.

    The table represents full-time equivalent (FTE), state paid, classroom teachers as of the 3rd pay period. The FTE counts were obtained through the NC Department of Public Instruction's (DPI) Educational Directory and Demographical Information Exchange (EDDIE) database. The EDDIE database includes information on school district contacts, school calendars, teacher counts, student enrollment, and many other items of interest. NC DPI bills it as "the authoritative source for NC public school numbers and demographic information."

    A few cautions are in order. First, the data does not display changes in teachers paid with federal and local funds. Although much of the funding for teaching positions comes from the state, it is important not to discount fluctuations in federal and local funding streams. In some cases, increases in state-funded teachers were offset by decreases in the number of teachers paid by funds from other sources. Similarly, decreases in teachers may have been balanced by increases in funding from other sources. NC DPI will release more detailed personnel information early next year. At that point, we'll know how many teaching positions were funded by state, local, and federal sources during the current school year. A CommenTerry on those figures is all but guaranteed.

    In addition, the table does not include student enrollment data. Student enrollment statistics are important because increases and decreases in FTE teachers may reflect commensurate changes in student enrollment. So why not include this information below? Although various student enrollment counts are available for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years, they are not available for 2013-14. Problems with DPI's new PowerSchool data system have delayed the release of student enrollment figures for the current school year.

    Finally, the teacher counts listed below reflect decisions made by central office staff and school boards to fund a range of instructional positions. School district officials may have used their budget flexibility to fund other types of instructional positions, namely teacher assistants and coaches. In other words, changing priorities, not changing budgets, may have produced changes in teacher counts.

    The Republicans maintained a majority in the NC General Assembly during the three budget years selected. During this time, they have been criticized for, well, everything. But the most vocal criticisms came from those claiming that mean-spirited Republicans were destroying public education in North Carolina.

    If that were the case, we would expect FTE to decrease, not increase, beginning in 2011. But NC DPI data show a 1,431 or 2 percent increase in classroom teachers between 2011-12 and 2013-14, as well as a small increase from 2012-13 to 2013-14. While it remains to be seen whether this increase kept pace with statewide student enrollment growth, it undermines the idea that the Republican leadership in the NC General Assembly decimated public school classrooms.

    The FTE counts for state-funded classroom teachers are one part of a much larger story, but that does not mean they should be discounted or worse, ignored.

    Facts and Stats

Full-time equivalent (FTE), state paid, classroom teachers as of the 3rd pay period, 2011-2014

Note: Districts are organized by LEA number and not LEA name.

    Education Acronym of the Week:    FTE -- Full-Time Equivalent

    Quote of the Week:

    "NC DPI is often asked to report the FTE for different groups of non-certified personnel. The General Assembly, Governor's Office, State Budget Office and others use this information for various purposes and the accuracy is important. The Division of School Business uses the monthly payroll files as the authoritative source for this data and calculates the FTEs using the different data elements submitted monthly by the LEAs. This allows us to avoid surveying the data from the LEAs."

    - NC Department of Public Instruction, Finance Officer Newsletter No. 014-13/14, November 1, 2013

    Click here for the Education Update archive.