As the law is currently written, the education lottery will do little to fund the most critical needs of North Carolina’s students. Too much of the revenue will be used for unproven class-size reduction efforts and pre-kindergarten programs. Too little of the lottery revenue will be given to school districts and charter schools that have critical school facilities needs. The General Assembly can maximize the educational benefit of the lottery revenue by distributing more funds for capital expenditures to high-growth school districts and to charter schools.
In November, the State Board of Education released the final report of the High Priority Schools Initiative, a four-year, $23 million class-size reduction program targeting low-performing and low-income elementary schools. The report offered no statistical evidence that smaller class sizes raised student achievement. Between the first and final year of the program, fewer schools met their state ABC growth targets and even fewer made Adequate Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Reduced class sizes failed to significantly increase student performance on state reading assessments. In the future, legislators and policymakers should not fund class-size initiatives because of their expediency or popularity but because they produce measurable gains in student achievement.
Governor Easley announced that North Carolina will raise its average teacher salary to the national average in three years. Adjusted for cost of living, pension contribution, and teacher experience, however, the state’s average teacher salary ranks 11th in the nation and is about $1,600 above the national average. There is no evidence to support the governor’s contention that a higher average salary will aid in recruiting and retaining a high-quality teacher workforce or will make students more competitive in the global economy. A system of merit-based pay would provide an incentive for highly qualified individuals to enter and stay in the teaching profession.
Like other states, North Carolina maintains a system of certification and licensing for public school teachers. Proponents of the system argue that certification standards will separate good teachers from poor ones, but there is no evidence that these standards determine teacher quality. A state-by-state comparison of teacher certification and student performance on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics exam shows that certification standards and teacher testing did not improve test scores. Schools should be able to recruit and retain talented teachers whether they are certified or not.
Multi-million dollar bond referendums and tax increases will not repair the damage done by years of inadequate school facilities planning. With construction and labor costs rising, massive school building programs, such as the one proposed by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), will exert a crippling tax burden on local communities.
From 2000 to 2005, while 105,000 North Carolinians lost jobs in the private sector, state and local government payrolls grew by 46,000 — an increase of 8.2%, 16th largest in the nation. N.C. state and local governments now have 710 employees per 10,000 residents — more than any other state of similar size, including Massachusetts.
In response to a widely cited study by the American Federation of Teachers, Harvard education professor Caroline Hoxby recently released a study of the academic proficiency of charter school students. Hoxby finds charter schools comparing favorably with regular public schools: "charter students are 5.2 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and 3.2 percent more likely to be proficient in math on their state’s exams."
A 2004 study on the academic impact and effectiveness of charter schools in North Carolina authored for the Terry Sanford Institute by Robert Bifulco and Helen Ladd reached some harsh conclusions regarding the performance of the charter schools. Using three different models that compare state end-of-grade (EOG) test scores for regular public school students and charter school students, Bifulco and Ladd conclude that North Carolina charter schools are not only failing to improve their students' academic performance, but are actually hurting it.
During the 2005 session, state lawmakers are expected to take up the issue of how to comply with court rulings in the Leandro case. It is important to discard widespread misperceptions. First, Leandro does not require taxpayers to spend more money on public education. Second, public-school funding does not differ significantly across counties when all spending is included. Third, the small gap that remains is shrinking, not growing, and is unlikely to explain differences in student outcomes. Finally, local funds are a reasonable way to compensate for elevated labor costs in counties with high housing prices.
A recent report published by the NC Center for Public Policy Research concludes that North Carolina is facing a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention. But neither the data on projected student enrollment growth nor teacher retention rates justify such a harsh assessment. Clearly teacher recruitment and retention is a challenge that will always have to be met. The best approach is to reward those teachers who best foster achievement and to differentiate salaries among teachers according to supply and demand conditions in different disciplines.
