Raising the bar: Tougher curriculum + tougher testing = lower scores ahead

fr stateboardSchools are bracing for a precipitous drop in student test scores coming down the pike next month — the result of a new, more rigorous curriculum and testing standards implemented statewide last year.

State voting changes dissected, debated at political forum

Changes to the voting laws in North Carolina will have only a small effect on voter turnout, according to a Western Carolina University political analyst.

College students must jump through new hoops to vote where they go to school

coverThe new voter identification requirement won’t likely affect North Carolinians who have put down roots, but more transient populations including college students may find the new regulations cumbersome. 

College students in North Carolina will have to make an extra effort if they want to vote in their college town — though it won’t be an impossible feat.  

Rural Center will survive, but as a shadow of its former self

Despite fears that the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center would meet its maker after losing its state funding, the center’s board of directors decided to persevere, albeit in a diminished capacity.

Cutting education spending is like eating your seed corn

op frI’ve always loved school. Consequently, I detest what the General Assembly is doing to education.

As a kid, I knew that looking forward to school each day put me in a minority. Maybe it was my parents’ influence. My dad was a high school graduate and the son of a textile mill foreman in Cheraw, S.C. He joined the Navy as soon as he could and got the hell out of Cheraw. My mom quit high school when she got married at 16 but earned her GED when she was in her 40s. I always felt that they both had high expectations for me — the youngest of three boys — from a very early age.

Meadows listens to constituents at town hall meetings

U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, sporting an Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians button, hosted a town hall meeting last Thursday in Cherokee that he said was the “most vocal” he has held in the district.

New voting law doesn’t pass the smell test

op frThe photo ID requirements included in the new voting law passed by the General Assembly and recently signed by Gov. Pat McCrory are problematic. Still, if it was just a voter ID law there wouldn’t be so much hell being raised about the bill’s ramifications. It’s the other voter suppression measures in this over-reaching bill that have many scratching their heads and wondering just what’s going on.

As most anyone who follows public policy in this country knows, voter ID laws — a requirement that every person have a state-approved photo identification card before being allowed to cast a vote — are being passed in many states and are very controversial.

Rally to bring King’s dream to Sylva

fr moralmondayThe Moral Monday protests that started  in Raleigh and made national headlines are now making the rounds in North Carolina with a stop scheduled in Sylva next Wednesday, Aug. 28.

You can’t take a ‘pig in a poke’ to the bank

op frIt’s difficult for me to believe that the new leadership in Raleigh would purposely sacrifice development in the state’s rural areas at the altar of political ideology. On purpose or not, however, that’s the way it looks to many of us who live in places not named Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro or Winston-Salem. 

Everyone braced for change when Gov. Pat McCrory and Republicans in both the House and Senate were duly elected to govern North Carolina. That’s the natural order of politics — to the winner goes the spoils. However, even many long-time observers were caught unawares by the speed, the ideological bent, and the reliance on unproven economic principals that infused the legislation passed during the first session in which the GOP had total control of the state.

N.C. reverts to paper ballots at big cost to counties

fr ballotsNorth Carolina is reverting back to paper ballots, forcing Haywood, Jackson and 29 other counties in the state to purchase completely new voting equipment by 2018.

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