RALEIGH – North Carolina continues to be a laughingstock in national education-reform circles – a fact that would come as a surprise to the many North Carolina politicians, journalists, and activists who live in blissful ignorance of reality.
As I have frequently noted, the state’s Blarney Tradition is one of the most debilitating impediments to our progress. Essentially, the state’s political class believes its own B.S.
Education is a prime example. Former Gov. Jim Hunt probably deserves some credit for the true educational progress North Carolina experienced, though only for policies adopted in his first two terms (1977-1984). According to independent national tests, North Carolina’s public schools posted significant achievement gains from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. There are several potential explanations for the trend, but perhaps some elements of Hunt’s 1980s-era Basic Education Program played a role, as did policies enacted during the tenure of his successor, Gov. Jim Martin.
By the end of that period, however, Hunt was back in office and collaborating with state lawmakers to enact a panoply of expensive new education programs such as Smart Start, the ABCs program, class-size reductions, and big teacher pay raises. Because Hunt was well-connected among national teacher unions and left-wing foundations, these policies got a huge amount of laudatory national attention. Unfortunately, they appear to have had no measurable effects on student achievement in North Carolina. Test scores are largely flat or worse since their implementation. Graduation rates remain awful. And other states, most notably South Carolina, have posted far more impressive performances since the mid-1990s.
To the extent that this was all a colossal waste of time and money, it certainly didn’t make North Carolina look wise or innovative. But that’s not what led to the national embarrassment I mentioned earlier.
The shameful part of the story has to do with North Carolina’s pattern of manipulating academic standards and measurements. Several years ago, our state gained national infamy by concocting a grossly exaggerated “graduation rate” in a blatant attempt to mislead federal officials and the public. More recently, a series of studies has shown that North Carolina sets some of the lowest achievement standards in the United States.
The touchstone of academic testing is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In addition to yielding average scale scores in basic subjects, NAEP assigns students to one of four groups according to their demonstrated knowledge: Advanced, Proficient, Basic, and Below Basic. Most analysts zero in on proficiency as the best goal to track over time. The NAEP standard for Proficient is similar to the proficiency standards used in international testing. It lies between the exemplary performance one might expect of the most advanced students in any country and the subpar performance that indicates a student has some basic knowledge or skills but cannot demonstrate consistent mastery of them.
Scholars Paul Peterson and Frederick Hess are editors of the journal EducationNext. They’ve just released their latest study of state vs. federal proficiency standards. There is only one straight-A performer on the list: South Carolina. Our neighbors to the south haven’t dumbed down their standards one bit in order to make themselves look better. As for North Carolina, we get a D+. We’re among a small minority of states getting Ds or Fs.
The Raleigh establishment should face facts: North Carolina has little to teach the rest of the country about enacting good education policy. South Carolina does.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.