State leaders agree: Public education should be equitable. Getting there is where it gets difficult

North Carolina’s executive education leadership has committed to robust plans to make the state’s education system — spanning from birth to the 12th grade — more equitable and higher quality, to the tune of billions of dollars.

Where the state goes from here, in terms of implementing and paying for those plans, isn’t so clear and requires cooperation and commitments from more than those executive leaders.

The plans, contained in a 57-page state Superior Court filing earlier this month, call for better pay and training for educators, expanded early childhood education, more access to college-credit and career course at high schools and major changes in the state’s school funding formula benefiting low-wealth and low-performing schools, among other things.

Superior Court Judge David Lee required the long-term action plan as a part of the drawn-out lawsuit known colloquially as the Leandro case, a reference to the original student plaintiff. The case dates back to when five low-wealth school districts sued the state in the 1990s, contending the state didn’t adequately fund them to provide quality education access and that they didn’t have the tax base to do it themselves.

Lee ordered the state — the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction and the North Carolina State Board of Education — to address seven key goals. The state submitted its plan March 15, based largely on a 300-page consultant report from 2019 and Gov. Roy Cooper’s Leandro Commission.

The state’s long-term action plan was formed during a pandemic that has worsened equitable education access, as many children struggled or failed to access virtual learning.

In the action plan, the state wants to ensure every North Carolina child has access to “high-quality” teachers, “high-quality” principals and “high-quality” educational services. It “commits” to fully implementing the plan by 2028 and fully realizing the goals of the plan in 2030.

But DPI and the State Board of Education don’t have the authority to implement much of what’s in it, particularly the costliest elements.

Despite not being parties to the case, the North Carolina General Assembly and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services are considered “responsible parties” for much of the plan, meaning they must agree to the specified measures. In particular, the General Assembly has authority over the state’s money, essentially controlling whether the large majority of the plans promised in court will ever be realized.

Who would be held accountable for a failure to implement the action plan is unclear. The plan remains before Lee, who hasn’t yet held a hearing to discuss it.

In the eyes of Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, the state’s action plan didn’t consult some of the most important people toward making it happen.

“I don’t think ‘left out’ is a strong enough word,” Berger said.

If he’d been invited to participate in the plan’s formation process, Berger said he would have pointed out what the General Assembly has been doing in the last several years, increasing education spending by more than a third — $2 billion — since Fiscal Year 2011. State education spending now totals $9.75 billion annually.

Spending that was too high before the Great Recession caused lawmakers to make swift cuts to education afterward, much of which has been restored, he said.

To ramp up spending as the state and Cooper suggest, he said, would force lawmakers’ hands to cut education spending again, come another recession. Republicans have taken to calling Democratic budgeting “rollercoaster-style spending” and tout their tempered approach that’s included cutting taxes and placing money in reserves.

The debate over the Leandro action plan isn’t necessarily over whether lawmakers disagree with a part or parts of it; Berger said he hasn’t had a chance yet to examine it in-depth. The question is over how much money to spend and how quickly to spend it.

Berger called the plan an attempt by state agencies and advocacy groups to form education policy, which he said is the job of the Legislature.

“All too often, when you see this sort of advocacy, the only measuring stick is, ‘How much money are you going spend?’” Berger said. The Leandro court rulings call for qualitative solutions to inequities, as well, he said.

“One thing I think everybody agrees on is what the Constitution says,” Berger said. The state must provide a sound, basic education for all students. But not everyone sees eye-to-eye on who makes what decisions to ensure compliance with it.

Raises, bonuses for teachers, state workers in Cooper's budget plan

Raises, expansion of NC Pre-K and more school counselors and nurses are major parts of the long-term Leandro action plan.

Advocacy groups support the governor’s proposal. In a statement, the North Carolina Association of Educators favored staff and faculty pay raises and increased funding for counselors and nurses. Every Child NC, on behalf of several other children and education advocacy groups, said the proposal would be “substantial progress” for the next two years but called the steps still “the bare minimum of what our students are owed.”

“As the Senate and House move forward with their proposals, we challenge them to take a more aggressive approach to ensure the state remains on pace to deliver a constitutional education to all students,” the groups’ statement reads.

Brad Wilson, chairman of Cooper’s Leandro Commission, said in an interview with WRAL he was “encouraged” by the long-term action plan filed March 15. It’s necessary for North Carolina to comply with its own Constitution.

“Now the hard work begins for the public policy debate about the timing, the pacing and funding of those efforts,” Wilson said. “And I hope that that all those who value and care about public education will watch that debate carefully and encourage the policymakers to support full funding of those elements necessary to bring us closer to full compliance.”

Already, some lawmakers have filed bills to address Leandro. One bill filed earlier this month, House Bill 249, would raise the cap on funding for children with disabilities by 0.25% and make funding account for variances in the severity of disabilities.

The Leandro action plan calls for an elimination of that cap and also for funding to address different services required by different needs, comprising about a tenth of the Leandro plan implementation price tag.

Some of the biggest pieces of the Leandro action plan include better pay and training for teachers, principals and assistant principals; more money for low wealth and low-performing schools through a change in the state’s funding formula; increased support for schools’ supplies and curriculum planning; more frequent student assessment; more school instructional support professionals (counselors, school psychologists and nurses); assistance for schools to address students’ out-of-school challenges; expansion of NC Pre-K and birth-through-three programs; and access to college-credit and career courses at every high school.

Some projects, Berger said, could use Congressionally appropriated federal stimulus money designated for North Carolina schools.

North Carolina received $396.3 million from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) last spring, $1.6 billion under the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act passed in December, and will receive $3.6 billion under the most recent stimulus, the American Rescue Plan.

The long-term action plan notes the stimulus funding as helpful, but entirely separate, from the plan.

"These funds were not intended to remedy the historical and unmet needs of children who are being denied the opportunity for a sound basic education but were intended to help mitigate the unavoidable loss of educational opportunities caused by the pandemic,” the plan’s introduction reads.

The long-term action plan is grounded on seven main goals:

“At-risk” students are those who may develop learning delays because of various factors outside of their control, such as living in poverty or having parents with lower than average educational attainment, per a North Carolina Supreme Court decision in the Leandro case.

A ruling in 2002 established the first three goals, and subsequent orders have called for the other four. Both plaintiffs and defendants have agreed to them.

The plan is based largely on a 2019 report by consultant WestEd, recommendations of Cooper’s Leandro Commission and issues continually brought up during the course of the case’s history.

Retired Judge Howard Manning, who presided over the cases for nearly two decades, has for years emphasized that schools need qualified teachers, qualified principals and assistant principals, and the resources to adequately fund their education goals.

Manning has been adamant that money is part of the solution, but not all of the solution. Quality leadership and attitudes are key, he’s said.

Although school districts in North Carolina and other states have pursued racial and economic integration of schools to improve performance and limit the need for costly interventions, integration is not part of the Leandro plan. Racial integration has been limited since the segregation-ending Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka U.S. Supreme Court case by more recent Supreme Court rulings.

To some extent, many of the actions listed are already taking place. They may be smaller versions of projects the state wants to scale up. Or it could be that certain areas are already meeting certain goals. For instance, the Wake County Public School System provides pre-kindergarten to more than three-quarters of the county’s eligible 4-year-olds. The action plan goal is three-quarters for each county.

Lawmakers support many elements of the plan, Berger spokesman Pat Ryan said. Lawmakers passed an expansion of the state’s Teaching Fellows program from five to eight campuses, added special language to establish an Advanced Teaching Roles Program and passed $43 million to increase instructional support positions.

There’s bipartisan support for raising teacher pay and improving early childhood education, Ryan said, although not all details are agreed upon.

The action plan dives extensively into improving early childhood education and pre-kindergarten opportunities. It calls for higher pay among early childhood educators, where turnover is high and median pay is far lower than the median pay for kindergarten teachers.

The state also seeks to expand the NC Pre-K and Smart Start programs for early childhood education, provide subsidies to some families to early childhood education and create “transition plans” for children going from pre-kindergarten into kindergarten.

If the state continues to increase education spending at the rate it has been, Republicans contend, it will spend more than the action plan calls for.

The action plan calls for $5.6 billion in new spending, and lawmakers have already boosted annual education spending by more than $2 billion in the last decade. Per pupil spending has risen by nearly $2,000, to just under $7,000 per student.

It’s not clear whether current law and spending increases already built into it will amount to $1.7 billion more by 2028 without additional legislation.

The elements of the Leandro action plan are costlier as they scale up in size and not because of large one-time startup costs. Several objectives listed don’t have cost estimates because exactly what will be implemented will depend on the results of studies, such as competitive pay increases.

The biggest elements of the plan are:

How the state determined the weights for additional funding for economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities and students with limited English proficiency isn't spelled out on the document.