Republican leaders in the N.C. House and Senate have laid out this year “an aggressive agenda for education,” as described by House Minority Leader Paul “Skip” Stam.

Stam and Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger called for a tax credit for families in private and home schools, merit pay for individual teachers rather than schools, an end of the cap on charter schools, and major changes to standardized testing.

Stam pointed to a recent study by the American Legislative Exchange Council that ranked North Carolina 30th in educational performance. “We can’t just do the same as we always have, or we’ll just get the same results,” he said.

“The key thing that this report tells us,” said Berger, “is that more money does not necessarily mean improved education. We have seen a series of governors come forward and tell us, ‘If you elect me … we will improve education,’ and generally what we see is ongoing proposals for spending more money. The legislature and the people of North Carolina have accepted those requests, and we see the results.”

Stam said many of their proposals can be accomplished with little monetary outlay. Some of them already have significant bipartisan support. The question will be whether the current budgetary climate is enough to change the outcome for now-familiar proposals, as Gov. Bev Perdue has promised to raise education spending in spite of massive budget shortfalls.

Tax credits for non-publics

Stam, a longtime supporter of non-public education, introduced H.B.335, the “Tax Fairness In Education Act”, the first week in March. The bill would provide a refundable tax credit of $1,250 per semester for qualifying families who take their children out of public schools in favor of a non-public option, including home schooling. The title is somewhat misleading, as the bill does nothing for 170,000 students already educated outside of public schools — only those who are taken off the public school rolls in the future. More than 90 percent of families would qualify financially for the credit.

The legislature’s Fiscal Research Division estimates that as many as 13,000 students could be withdrawn from public schools in response to the tax credit, saving the state as much as $35 million and local governments from $9 million to $25 million every year in avoided public school expenses.
The fiscal report does not expect many parents to “game the system” by enrolling their children in public schools solely to qualify for the tax credit. This is probably because the proposed $2,500 per year does not go far to offset the cost of nonpublic education.

Researchers have found that while home-schoolers typically spend less than $1,000 per child for books and other educational expenses, they usually forego a second income so one parent can serve as a full-time instructor. Private school tuition ranges from a few thousand dollars in small church schools to well over $10,000 a year in elite private academies.

Merit pay

Another inequity the Republicans would like to address is teacher bonuses. The present system rewards teachers as part of their school, rather than for individual performance. “The worst teacher in a good school gets the bonus, while the best teacher in a poor school does not,” said Stam. “I would invert that overnight.”

As the filing deadline approached, though, the Republicans had not offered a bill in either house. A measure largely sponsored by Democrats, House Bill 707, would study the ABC bonus program; four Republicans signed on as co-sponsors.

Preschool programs

One proposal already gaining traction is H.B.539, “Merge Smart Start and More At Four,” which would combine two preschool programs promoted by former governors Jim Hunt and Mike Easley. Berger took time in a March 10 press conference to emphasize that the two programs serve similar populations, and one of them already appears to have student capacity it can’t fill. Combining them would streamline administration and reduce overall costs.

While the idea was promoted by Republicans early in the session, the present bill was introduced by four Democratic sponsors, with 51 co-sponsors — only 20 of them Republican.

Rep. Bill Owens, D-Pasquotank, told WRAL-TV in Raleigh, “Maybe we could have afforded both programs before, but now we can’t really afford to have one program, much less both.” The News & Observer of Raleigh has reported Perdue is giving serious consideration to the proposal.

Charter school cap

Since they were first authorized in 1997, the number of charter schools has been capped at 100. Supporters have sought for several years to raise or eliminate the cap. Both options are available this session.

Senate Bill 379 and its companion in the House, H.B.288, would remove the cap entirely. Democrat Sen. Larry Shaw joined with 15 Republicans in the Senate and 11 more in the House to co-sponsor this bill. Senate Bill 397, with many of the same sponsors as S.B.379, would raise the cap by five schools per year, while another, S.B.573, would raise the cap by six schools per year, excluding high-performing schools and those which are the first charters in their counties.

The latter bill would implement a number of changes recommended by the 2007 Blue Ribbon Commission on Charter Schools. Sen. Eddie Goodall and nine other Republicans sponsored the measure.

Testing programs

A latecomer to the program was an act which would suspend development and use of the state’s “End of Grade” (EOG) tests. H.B.609 would halt all standardized testing in public schools for a two year period, “except for those required by federal law or as a condition for federal funding.”

Stam pointed out that the lack of an objective measurement of student performance hampers efforts to improve the schools.

“When we were going strictly by EOG tests,” he said, “[where] we set a pass or fail rate wherever the Board of Education wants to set it, we do pretty well. But when we have a nationally normed test like the NAEP [the National Assessment of Educational Progress], our state averages are below the proficient level in math and reading.”

Private and home schools already are required to administer nationally standardized tests. “With a 66 percent graduation rate, our average student is not proficient,” Stam said. “That’s not good.”

Hal Young is a contributor to Carolina Journal.