NC Education Alliance

Lindalyn Kakadelis, Director of the North Carolina Education Alliance, was the featured speaker at the Shaftesbury Society Luncheon yesterday. These luncheons are a regular feature at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh. Her presentation was on educational choice and empowerment for students in North Carolina. It was titled, "Accomplishing the Mission of the North Carolina Eucation Alliance".

Lindalyn's explanation of her role is to help parents understand how to get a better education for their children by making the complex education establishment easier to understand.

Lindalyn Kakadelis Is A Powerful Advocate For Our Children

Lindalyn is a persausive speaker whose enthusiasm for education is well known in North Carolina. Before coming to the Alliance, Mrs. Kakadelis served as the director of the Children’s Scholarship Fund of Charlotte working on behalf of disadvantaged children. Mrs. Kakadelis also served two terms on the Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education where she worked on the Legislative and Curriculum Committees and chaired the Policy Committee.

Mrs. Kakadelis began her career in education as an elementary schoolteacher, later becoming a preschool director, PTA member, and PTA legislative chairperson when she had children. Above all, her career has been governed by a commitment to empowering families through educational freedom and competition.

Her presentation yesterday was focused on actions we could take to help our children get a better education. Her use of statistics was limited to those that supported the important points, making the presentation much more about our children than most education presentations. She covered a lot of ground, but some of the points that she made clearly stand out.

Education in America is a bureaucratic political monopoly that consumes $500 billion every year. However no matter how much money we spend, no teacher can be fired for bad teaching. They are granted tenure that protects them no matter how little they teach. Parents and children are disposable in the system. The teachers unions control the system. Pay increases are automatic and never have anything to do with student achievement. That is why private schools teach our children signifcantly more effectively for approximately 25% less money than the public school system, even in spite of the fact that private schools frequently pay taxes while public schools are exempt.

One of the most critical problems is that how money is spent is hidden inside of a complex accounting process intended to make it impossible to evaluate how effectively money is spent. Parents need to help those who desire improved education by forcing the politicians to fix the education funding maze. The goal will be to assure that funding is attached to the child, not to the classroom, so that use of funds can be compared to student achievement and progress measured.

Lindalyn's most compelling point was that the system needs to be held accountable for "bright flight". For years this has been mis-characterized as "white flight" and used to tarnish anyone who complained about the problem. However it is now clear that the brightest of all races are leaving our public school system, weakening the ability of the system to deliver a quality education to all. We must correct this problem, not by denying students choice, but by making the system work. That means it must teach our children better than it does now by a significant margin.