Judge right on N.C. failure to educate, wrong about money

By Steve Johnston

former Staff Director, Swann Fellowship, published in Charlotte Observer, May 20, 2014

N.C. Superior Court Judge Howard Manning’s recent report in the long-running Leandro lawsuit is a blunt reminder that North Carolina is failing to educate its children.

In most cases, he writes, half or more of North Carolina children are not receiving the sound basic education that the N.C. Supreme Court says the N.C. Constitution requires.

Manning argues that educators have the diagnostic tools they need, and know what each child needs to learn in order to be reading proficiently. But teachers have refused to alter their teaching routines to individualize instruction, he says. He faults principals for not insisting that teachers teach the children the skills they need.

Perhaps it’s that simple. But Manning writes as if every child walks a line that begins at pre-kindergarten and should lead to reading proficiency as third grade ends. But second-grade classrooms may include children who weren’t in North Carolina for pre-K, who may not have been on this side of the planet in first grade. The judge and the teachers may live in different worlds.

And in his report, Manning focuses just on reading.

That’s a foundational skill, of course, but our children will fall well shy of the mark if North Carolina narrows its ambitions for its children to the skill of reading.

It was an achievement when courts said every child should have access to a sound basic education. It was another achievement to define what that meant, both in terms of the skills every student should acquire, and the teaching, leadership and instructional resources that every school should have.

But those are yesterday’s achievements. And yesterday never brought the political consensus that would make it happen. Manning now writes that he wants to wait for another data set of test scores.

And after those scores are in? It would be easy for impatient schoolchildren to conclude that they’ll be grandparents before any substantive changes arrive in N.C. classrooms.

That conclusion is made even more plausible by the litany of shame written in an April filing by Leandro plaintiffs: The legislature has cut testing programs used by the court to assess achievement. The State Board of Education has issued K-2 assessment standards without specific enforcement provisions. There have been statewide reductions in assistant principal slots, teacher assistants, textbook purchases and staff development.

But by far the most important: allowing teacher pay to drop from 27th in the nation to 46th, reducing students’ access to highly competent teachers. And no matter what Band-Aid the legislature picks during the current short session, the bleeding away of teachers will continue. North Carolina is not going tobe “Leandro-compliant” any generation soon.

What to do? It will take money, no matter what Judge Manning says. Voters whose lives were made better by earlier education improvements must reach back and advocate for those not yet served. That echoes a message last week from the White House, which released a proclamation on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling:

“On the 60th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education,” President Barack Obama said, “let us heed the words of Justice Thurgood Marshall, who so ably argued the case against segregation. ‘None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody... bent down and helped us pick up our boots.’

“Let us march together, meet our obligations to one another, and remember that progress has never come easily – but even in the face of impossible odds, those who love their country can change it.”

Steve Johnston is a former staff director of the Swann Fellowship. A longer version, with charts of the test data, is at www.swannfellowship.org.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/05/20/4921842/judge-right-on-nc-failure-to-educate.html#.U3ynWv116Y9