Consultant says NC didn’t provide enough education funding. How big is the price tag?
Twenty-five years after school districts first took the case to court, an independent consultant says North Carolina needs to sharply increase school funding — $8 billion more over the next 8 years — to help provide students a sound basic education.
The report from WestEd, a nonprofit research group, says that state funding has not kept up with needs, leaving North Carolina near the bottom in the nation in spending on education. The result, the report says, is that academic performance has lagged in the state’s public schools.
“The state is further away from meeting its constitutional obligation to provide every child with the opportunity for a sound basic education than it was when the Supreme Court of North Carolina issued the Leandro decision more than 20 years ago,” the WestEd report says.
WestEd was brought in after both sides in the long-running Leandro school funding lawsuit agreed in 2017 that an independent expert was needed to suggest additional steps to improve education for all children in North Carolina.
WestEd had presented the report in June, but it wasn’t publicly released until Tuesday by Superior Court Judge David Lee.
The report will help improve North Carolina’s education system and help leaders make decisions that benefit all public school students, especially those who are most vulnerable and at risk, according to Eric Davis, chairman of the State Board of Education.
“The WestEd Report tells us that considerable work must be done – and done soon – for the State to meet the promise of our Constitution for all North Carolina students,” Davis said in a statement Tuesday. “The State Board shares this sense of urgency and recognizes our constitutional duty to ensure access to a ‘sound, basic education.’”
NC’s long-running Leandro case
The Leandro court case began in 1994 when school districts in five counties — Hoke, Halifax, Robeson, Vance and Cumberland — took the state to court.
In 1997, the state Supreme Court declared that the state constitution guarantees every child “an opportunity to receive a sound basic education.”
In 2004, the state Supreme Court held that the state’s efforts to provide a sound basic education to poor children were inadequate. The court did not prescribe specific solutions; that was left up to legislators and education leaders.
Lee was assigned the job of overseeing the case in 2016 when retired Superior Court Judge Howard Manning asked for the case to be reassigned.
In the years since the case began, WestEd notes how the number of North Carolina students who are economically disadvantaged and who don’t use English as a primary language have increased sharply.
“State funding for education has not kept pace with this growth, and the state does not currently provide adequate resources to ensure that all students have the opportunity to meet higher standards and become college and career ready,” the report says.
NC per-pupil spending has declined
The report notes how as of Fiscal Year 2017, North Carolina’s per-pupil spending was the sixth lowest in the nation. When adjusted to 2018 dollars, per-pupil spending in North Carolina has declined slightly overall, about 6% since 2009–10, according to the report.
“Money doesn’t buy outcomes,” Pat Ryan, a spokesman for Republican Senate leader Phil Berger, said in a statement Tuesday. “New York spends more per student than any state in the country – two-and-a-half times as much as North Carolina – and their scores are still lower than North Carolina’s.”
WestEd suggests providing over the next eight years an additional $3.2 billion to get students up to grade level with an additional $3.7 billion to maintain grade level performance.
The report also suggests an additional $1.2 billion for early childhood education programs, such as NC Pre-K and Smart Smart, and $15.5 million for principal and teacher development.
“The report released today in connection to the Leandro case documents, in painstaking detail, what parents and educators have been saying for years: the underfunding of North Carolina’s public education system is chronic, caustic, and craven,” Mark Jewell, president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, said in a statement Tuesday. “The current level of investment being made by the state in public education is not keeping pace with educational needs, and our students, particularly in lower-income areas of the state, are getting left behind.”
Democratic lawmakers also seized on the report’s findings, saying it points to the need to pass a state budget with more education spending than proposed by Republicans.
“Ensuring that every North Carolina student, regardless of their zip code or background, has an opportunity to receive a good public education is the most important promise we as legislators can give to North Carolina families,” House Democratic leader Darren Jackson said in a statement Tuesday. “Today’s report confirms that this Republican legislature has not made good on that promise.”
But Ryan said per-pupil expenditures are currently $10,500 per student, and that this year’s budget spends more than $10 billion on K-12 education.
Ryan said North Carolina already spends a higher share of its revenue on schools than 33 other states and provides more funding to poor school districts than to wealthy ones.
“Of course, properly funding the education system is a critical priority for both parties, and always has been,” Ryan said. “The WestEd report suggests increasing K-12 education spending by a total of $6.8 billion over the next eight years. The Republican-led General Assembly has increased education spending by a total of nearly $10 billion over the previous eight years.”
Provide schools with qualified teachers and principals
Other WestEd recommendations would help:
▪ Provide a qualified, well-prepared and diverse teaching staff in every school.
▪ Provide a qualified and well-prepared principal in every school.
▪ Provide all at-risk students with the opportunity to attend high-quality early childhood programs to ensure they can begin kindergarten fully ready to learn.
▪ Direct additional resources, opportunities and initiatives to economically disadvantaged students.
▪ Revise the student assessment system and school accountability system to provide actionable data and monitor progress toward compliance with the Leandro requirements.
▪ Build an effective regional and statewide system of support for the improvement of low-performing and high-poverty schools in North Carolina.
▪ Convene an expert panel to assist the court in monitoring state policies, plans, programs and progress over time.
“The report offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity for a fundamental course correction in the delivery of public education in our state,” N.C. Justice Center executive director Rick Glazier and Matt Ellinwood, director of the Education & Law Project, said in a statement Tuesday.
“It spells out the concrete steps the state must take to ensure every school is led by a strong principal; provides a well-rounded curriculum delivered by trained teachers in every classroom; and has sufficient support staff and interventions to meet the academic, social and health needs of all children.”
In conjunction with the WestEd report, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper formed a group to recommend ways to properly staff schools to carry out the court rulings. Members of the Commission on Access To Sound Basic Education say that “the state’s current funding formula is not sufficient to ensure every student has access to a sound, basic education.”
“Your zip-code shouldn’t determine your future, and this groundbreaking report shows that we need to make significant investments in our public schools, strengthen our teacher and principal pipelines, and greatly expand early childhood learning opportunities for our most at-risk students,” Cooper said in a statement Tuesday. “It’s time for a specific plan to get the job done, and I look forward to continuing to work with the State Board of Education and the plaintiffs in the case on developing that plan,”
This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 3:25 PM.
