RALEIGH – It bears repeating, given the central role that public education plays in North Carolina political debate: our schools have vastly more resources to work with than they did a generation ago.
For every school-related problem, there are politicians and commentators who offer a tax-related solution. If teachers are exiting the profession, we should dramatically increase average pay. If students aren’t performing in poorer, rural school districts, those districts should receive dramatic increases in state funding. If low-income and minority students aren’t performing in urban districts such as Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Wake, they should receive dramatic increases in state and local funding. If it’s still not enough, we should spend millions more on universal preschool, class-size reduction, technology, new facilities, etc.
Education is a good investment. It is overwhelmingly the largest-single function of state government, spending-wise, and has been for decades. A properly structured educational system is worth taxing citizens and spending their money to operate, as it fulfills what I consider to be a core state function: ensuring that future citizens have the knowledge and skills necessary to be informed voters and responsible citizens.
But the underperformance of public education, in North Carolina and in the nation as a whole, cannot be attributed to inadequate funding. Adjusted for inflation and student enrollment, spending on public schools has soared. The American system is more generously funded, again in per-pupil terms, than almost every other educational system in the world. In North Carolina, spending per pupil rose more than 60 percent from the mid-1980s (when the Basic Education Plan was enacted by the General Assembly and then-Gov. Jim Hunt) until 2001, a period that included massive increases in funding to raise teacher pay “to the national average” (which was bunk), to build new facilities to accommodate enrollment growth, and to steer more state dollars to smaller and poorer districts (which was a policy based on inaccurate statistics purporting to show large disparities in resources across the state). Since 2001, the inflation-adjusted per-pupil trend has been essentially flat, in part because of fiscal crises and in part because of a massive enrollment surge.
It wouldn’t be fair to say that none of this spending has been accompanied by improvements in student performance. Nationally, there was a slight uptick in average scores, though hardly enough to conclude that the additional resources had been wisely invested. In North Carolina, our students actually made significant gains in reliable national tests during the early part of the period in question (feel free to ignore any trends derived from the state’s end-of-grade tests, which are garbage). But as the full effects of the costly reforms of the mid-1990s kicked in, our performance on national tests actually became less impressive. There were still gains in average scale scores and proficiency levels in math, but North Carolina’s reading performance declined, while its science scores barely budged. More importantly, these scores were for 4th and 8th graders. The final product of an educational system is a well-educated high-school graduate. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of a significant improvement on this measure in recent years.
Looking at North Carolina’s experience in isolation could lead one to false conclusions. Other states raised spending less than North Carolina did since the mid-1980s, and also saw improvements, particularly early on. Others raised spending more than North Carolina did, and saw their schools perform less impressively than ours.
If adding to the $7,000-$8,000 currently spent on operating and capital costs per pupil in most N.C. public schools would result in significant and lasting educational benefits, there might be a good case for it. Right now, though, that case would be exceedingly difficult to make. Structural changes should proceed it – changes that set higher academic standards, retain and compensate teachers based on performance, and give parents more power to choose the educational setting that will best meet their children’s needs.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.