An onslaught on public education
Published December 26, 2024
2024 marked a continuing – and at times audacious – eating away at public schools in North Carolina.
Governing boards appointed directly or indirectly by state legislators drove away a chancellor at UNC-Chapel Hill, asserted control over athletic conference switches, and did away with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs at state universities.
Though pay for North Carolina’s public school teachers continued to land near the bottom in national rankings, legislators failed to grant additional raises to teachers, whose pay hasn’t kept up with inflation.
Instead – and despite at least $53 billion in damage from Hurricane Helene to Western North Carolina – they adopted a massive expansion of private school vouchers to divert billions of taxpayer dollars from public schools.
Outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper called vouchers “the biggest threat to public schools in decades.”
Average teacher pay in North Carolina was projected to rank 41st in 2023-24 – even behind Alabama.
More than 10,000 teachers (11.5% of the teacher workforce) left North Carolina classrooms in 2023. The school year started with more than 3,000 vacant teaching positions, and schools continued to hire an increasing percentage of unlicensed teachers.
After 30 years of litigation over state school funding, a seemingly partisan NC Supreme Court heard arguments yet again in the Leandro case.
Attorney Melanie Dubis told the court that 69% of students in the state’s 3rd through 8th grades – more than 480,000 children – don’t read at the level required by previous rulings in the case.1
And the state was projected to fall short of its goal of 2 million North Carolinians with college degrees by 2030.
THERE WERE, however, some bright spots:
• In November, Democrats appeared to break Republicans’ supermajority in the state House, giving Governor-elect Josh Stein, a public education advocate, more bargaining power with the legislature.
• Mo Green was elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction, defeating home-schooler Michele Morrow.
• The state’s community colleges belatedly received $64 million to help them meet enrollment growth last year.
• Lee Roberts showed promise as the new chancellor at UNC-Chapel Hill.
• The UNC Board of Governors held tuition flat for the eighth consecutive year.
• And contrary to national trends, enrollment increased at the state’s public universities.
IN DECEMBER, North Carolina learned that it once again ranks 48th in the nation for per-pupil funding, and 49th for the portion of its economy it devotes to public schools.
“North Carolina is basically a situation of missed opportunity,” the research director at the Education Law Center said.2
North Carolina can do much, much more. But we simply don’t.
1 https://publicedworks.org/2024/02/leandro-remember-the-children/.
