A measure introduced in the North Carolina House would expand transparency requirements in public schools, including by requiring teachers to post lesson plans online for easy access by parents.

Filed on May 2, House Bill 1032, Academic Transparency, requires that lesson plans be posted online no later than 10 days after the lessons are handed out. The bill defines a lesson plan as including the “names of all instructional and supplemental materials used by the school,” “any other course materials used in the course,” and any materials “created by the teacher with the teacher identified as the author.”

HB 1032 also requires that schools make available any “procedures for the documentation, review, or approval of the lesson plans,” plus a “list of teacher and staff training materials and activities used at each school during the current school year.”

To protect privacy, the measure allows teachers or staff members to request that the school use their “personal title and last initial” rather than full name “when posting materials online to be viewed by the public.”

HB 1032 is sponsored by Reps. Jake Johnson, R-Poke; David Willis, R-Union; Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke; and Allen Chesser, R-Nash.

“Why teachers would balk at posting lessons is a mystery to me,” noted Dr. Robert Luebke, director of the Center for Effective Education at the John Locke Foundation. “If you’re doing what you should be doing, teachers should welcome anything that facilitates parental involvement. If you’re not willing to share what’s going on in the classroom, it’s a bad sign. Why? That’s the question that should be answered.”

A previous version of the 2023 budget included similar provisions requiring course materials and lesson plans be “prominently displayed online,” but they were stripped out of the final proposal.

Also passed in 2023, the Parents Bill of Rights grants the right for parents to request information about what their child is learning in school, including lessons, textbooks, tutoring services, and other details. But the PBR stops short of mandating that lesson plans be posted online, as HB 1032 does.

A Carolina Journal poll from November 2022 showed that parents are increasingly concerned about what is being taught in public school classrooms. Seventy-two percent of parents surveyed said classroom instruction has become more political in the past five years. That concern was bi-partisan, with 84% of Republicans saying they were worried, 69% of Independents, and 67% of Democrats.

HB 1032 is assigned to the House Education Committee.