• John Locke Update

    Compare State Education Systems With Caution

    posted November 12, 2019 by Dr. Terry Stoops
    Last week, the Education Law Center published “Making the Grade 2019,”  a report that focuses exclusively on three categories of public school inputs: funding levels, distribution, and effort using…
  • John Locke Update

    Should Lawmakers Grant Local Option Sales Tax Flexibility?

    posted May 14, 2019 by Joseph Coletti
    In 2011, Buncombe County commissioners and the president of the Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College promised voters that, if passed, a quarter-cent tax increase on the ballot that year would pay…
  • John Locke Update

    The Unfinished Business of School Finance Reform

    posted February 13, 2019 by Dr. Terry Stoops
    A 2016 report published by the General Assembly’s nonpartisan Program Evaluation Division detailed the distribution of state funds to public schools and concluded that the system’s “features and controls are…
  • Press Release

    Clear Sign of a Burgeoning Bureaucracy

    posted April 11, 2006
    RALEIGH – In the last eight years, North Carolina public schools have increased in personnel by 19 percent, a new John Locke Foundation Spotlight shows. Even school districts that are…
  • Research Report

    Public School Hiring Frenzy: As Personnel Increases, So Does Bureaucracy

    posted April 11, 2006 by Dr. Terry Stoops
    Neither enrollment increases nor federal and state mandates can account for the 19 percent increase in school personnel over the last eight years. The glut of public school personnel hiring is evident in counties that have a declining student population. Despite losing nearly 10,000 students in eight years, these school districts added 819 employees. This shows that school districts actively maintain their bureaucracy even as the amount of work declines.

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