RALEIGH – A recent school-finance decision from the Texas Supreme Court is not a binding legal precedent in North Carolina, but it does constitute a teachable moment.
Texas has, like North Carolina, been the subject of protracted litigation about its system for funding public schools. Indeed, as Carolina Journal reported this past summer, many of the lawsuits have shared theoretical and institutional support from activists seeking court-ordered increases in public-school spending – and taxes to pay for it.
The Leandro case here in North Carolina followed the national pattern. First, plaintiffs tried to make an equity argument – that it was unfair and unconstitutional for some public schools and school districts to have more resources than others due to differences in the property-tax base. The debatable unfairness aside, there was little constitutional basis for this claim. So plaintiffs defaulted to an adequacy argument – that because state constitutions typically required states to fund or provide educational services, that essentially established the right of every student to access to a school receiving adequate state funds to provide a basic education.
This argument passed constitutional muster in most courts, and deserved to. Given the plain text of existing state constitutional language on public education, adequacy is an appropriate standard. Unfortunately, the meaning of the term “adequacy” is not self-evident. Some activists have tried to stretch its meaning to accomplish what they could not win in an equity claim or through the political process: a massive increase in overall school spending, and a redistribution of the funds to lower-spending districts.
I’ve discussed these issues at some length in the past, and don’t wish to recapitulate my points here. I’d just observe that anyone trying to prove that North Carolina’s public-education spending is unconstitutionally low has an extremely steep hill to climb. State taxpayers fork over roughly $8,000 per student on average, including operating and capital, and even the lowest-spending districts don’t fall much below that average. This amount represents a doubling of real resources – adjusting for inflation and enrollment – over the past two decades. It is more than the average cost of private schools freely chosen by parents (though lower than the average cost of prep schools, which mostly cater to the wealthy and make up only a small share of the private-school market).
Faced with a similar issue – whether public-school funding in Texas met the standard of adequacy – the Texas Supreme Court ruled last week that it did (while also striking down a new school-finance system on unrelated grounds, that it violated a prior prohibition against a statewide property tax). “The Court recognized — as all Texans recognize — that we can and should do a better job of educating students in Texas,” said Texas Attorney Gen. Greg Abbott. “But just because we can do a better job does not mean that the job being done now is unconstitutional.”
So far, North Carolina’s courts and public officials have not spoken with similarly precise language on this matter. I think a fair reading of previous Leandro decisions would lead one to conclude that funding is considered adequate but educational outcomes are not, a conclusion with which I strongly agree. But others still believe that the NC Supreme Court is going to come along and order the General Assembly to spend hundreds of millions of additional dollars a year. I hope and trust this is a delusion.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.