RALEIGH – Interesting how reality gets twisted by politics, media coverage, and the passage of time.
In the celebrated Leandro lawsuit on the equity of school finance in North Carolina, plaintiffs representing students in five school districts argued that the relatively low property wealth in their counties justified a constitutional claim to more funds from the state. Subsequent to the filing of Leandro more than a decade ago, a group of urban counties intervened to argue that they, too, were entitled to more state funding under the constitution’s public-education provisions.
These arguments failed. It is critically important to remember that. Ultimately, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the state constitution established the right to the opportunity for a sound, basic education. Later, it defined the phrase to suggest that students were entitled to access to well-qualified teachers and other resources necessary to achieve a basic competence in core academic subjects.
The high court has pointedly not suggested that any particular amount of new money needs to be collected from taxpayers and spent on public schools, be they located in “low-wealth” counties or not. It also rejected a ruling by the trial judge in the case, Wake County Superior Court Judge Howdy Manning, that access to preschool was mandated by the constitution for at-risk students.
Logically, it makes no sense to suggest that Leandro orders the state to spend more money. Public schools in North Carolina spend about twice as much in real, per-pupil terms than they did 20 years ago. The low-wealth systems represented in Leandro now have better funding, again in real terms, than the wealthiest systems in the state did when the lawsuit was filed. And the current level of public-school funding – which exceeds the per-pupil cost of most private schools in the state, by the way – funds plenty of positions and activities that have nothing to do with the constitutional obligation to promote basic competence in core subjects such as reading and math.
Moreover, the Leandro rulings have never been about equalizing the resources available across the various school districts in North Carolina. The constitution says nothing about it. More important, school spending varies little across districts, contrary to what you may have heard or read. The issue is essentially a phony one, and legally irrelevant. Even Manning, whom equity activists have lauded as their champion, has spent much of his time lately berating the quality of education provided in Mecklenburg County, which is among the wealthiest in the state.
Still, some insist that the Supreme Court has ordered the state to spend more money. They even cite specific numbers, and the media sometimes buy into them, as the Associated Press did Tuesday when reporting on a rally where activists demanded more funding from the legislature. “The cost to meet the Leandro requirements for all students is estimated at more than $220 million a year,” the story stated.
Says who? The net cost to the treasury could well be zero, if the state complies with the order in the correct manner by redistributing existing dollars, freeing up local schools from extraneous mandates, and ensuring that students poorly served by assigned schools have publicly funded alternatives available to them, alternatives that provide the educational opportunities they deserve.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.