Editorial: Stop playing politics. Truitt must stand with Leandro and quality education for all

CBC Editorial: Friday, March 15, 2024; #8915

The following is the opinion of Capitol Broadcasting Company

Last week soon-to-be-former Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt derided the court-ordered Comprehensive Remedial Plan – a consensus program developed by the State Board of Education with the parties who successfully sued it because of North Carolina’s failure to deliver on the promise to provide EVERY child with access to a quality education.

Just two days earlier, voters in the Republican Party primary had relieved her of any perceived obligation to be reflexively partisan. Yet, after being liberated of that burden, Truitt offered up the typical partisan response the state’s legislative leaders have offered to a responsible and reasonable plan.

Truth be told, Truitt, like her legislative leaders, aren’t interested in meeting the state’s Constitutional obligation to children. Rather they seek to impose a rigid ideology and make public schools weaker and the last resort for education merely for those who cannot afford any alternative or lack the appropriate racial, religious or social background to access other education resources.

She derided the plan because it did not include a specific curriculum – in this case the “science of reading.”

Purposeful, or not, Truitt displayed a striking lack of understanding of what the Leandro settlement – and the Comprehensive Remedial Plan – are about and what they seek to achieve.

The consensus Comprehensive Remedial Plan is NOT about specifically what should or should not be taught – or how it should be taught -- in public schools.

It is about making sure those who are doing the administering and teaching in our public schools are competent, have the necessary resources and facilities to effectively transmit to students the contents of a specific curriculum. It is a prescription so students in our schools have adequate facilities, resources and an environment to allow them to absorb what a specific curriculum contains, as transmitted by fully competent instruction.

“I know we need to spend more on education, but we don’t have a roadmap to do that right now,” Truitt said last week. What does she think the Comprehensive Remedial Plan is? What does she think it does?

We don’t suggest for a second that the Comprehensive Remedial Plan represents all that needs to be done to provide a quality education to every North Carolina child. The reality is, like most negotiated settlements, it represents a best effort, among opposing views, to compromise and move ahead.

It is a sincere and good effort in the right direction to move the state’s public schools ahead.

Perhaps, instead of offering up a set of partisan talking points, Truitt might, now that she’s been liberated of her necessity for partisan posturing, offer up a section-by-section set of suggestions on how she might enhance the Comprehensive Remedial Plan.

What more is needed, than outlined in the plan, to give potential teachers, and those in the classroom now, an even greater ability to communicate and engage with the students? What needs to be done to enhance and improve schools of education and professional development for teachers and administrators?

What else is needed in our public schools, than outlined in the plan, to better support the physical and mental health of students so they are best able to focus on learning? How can there be adequate health care and mental health professionals in all schools?

What additionally needs to be done, then outlined in the plan, to provide a learning environment with the facilities and resources to help teachers be more effective and students more receptive? What needs to be done to reduce class size, provide more classrooms and make sure those classrooms have the modern resources necessary?

Fixing the school calendar, determining the specific curriculums to teach students how to read, write, add and subtract, are all well within Truitt’s purview now. Any failure to advance rests solely with her and her inability to engage with either the State Board of Education, the public education establishment or the leadership of the General Assembly.

It is easy to be reflexively partisan and serve up stale talking points.

Truitt now has an opportunity to take a nobler course – standing for what is right and necessary and with determination -- to do the hard work to provide public schools that truly deliver a quality education for every child.

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