A version of the following editorial appeared in the March 2013 print edition of Carolina Journal:
The General Assembly has just wrapped up Education Week, an occasion for lawmakers to discuss school reforms with superintendents, principals, and teachers from across North Carolina.
These conversations are important, but what’s more encouraging is that legislative leaders seem poised to build on the consequential K-12 reforms enacted in the previous legislative session. To its credit, the 2011-12 General Assembly ended the state’s arbitrary cap on public charter schools and created a tuition-tax credit allowing parents of children with special needs more financial freedom to pursue options outside of traditional district schools, including private schools and homeschooling.
Additional legislation was introduced but did not pass that, among other things, would have ended teacher tenure and created a tax-credit scholarship program allowing businesses to donate, tax-free, to nonprofit organizations that provide scholarships to low-income students.
These proposals should be the starting point for more extensive reforms. That agenda should include:
* Performance pay for teachers and — if ending tenure entirely is not possible — limiting “career status” to the top-performing teachers.
* Additional flexibility for charter schools, letting school districts and universities establish charter schools; allowing districts to go all-charter (as Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools would like to do); guaranteeing full, per-pupil funding for charter schools, as the law requires; permitting charter operators to gain access to capital funding; and letting nonprofit and for-profit virtual charter schools compete with the state’s monopoly online charter school.
* Expanded tax benefits for investments in education. These could take the form of tax-free education savings accounts, tax-credit scholarships, or refundable tuition tax credits, for starters.
North Carolina public schools are not starved for funding. A recent report by John Locke Foundation director of research and education studies Terry Stoops found that in 2008, the most recent year data are available, the per-pupil expenditure for elementary school students in North Carolina was the sixth-highest in the world and spending on secondary students was fifth-highest. Even so, nations with the highest per-pupil expenditures did no better on measures of student performance than countries spending less.
That money has not translated into better performance by North Carolina students. National Assessment of Educational Progress test results show fourth-grade and eighth-grade reading scale scores were higher in 2002 than they were in 2011. Over that same time, fourth-grade and eighth-grade reading scores have remained flat.
And though high-school graduation rates are improving, diplomas are declining in value. The remediation rate for North Carolina community college students — the percentage of high-school graduates who need make-up courses to perform at college level when enrolling — is on the rise. The rate was 65 percent last year, compared with 57 percent five years ago. That’s unacceptable.
The North Carolina Constitution promises “a general and uniform system of free public schools … wherein equal opportunities shall be provided for all students.” None of the reforms before the General Assembly would undermine that basic guarantee, and any would improve those opportunities for aspiring youngsters.