The General Assembly is back in session this spring, with a lot of issues on the table – most notably education, as lawmakers look to tweak the state budget. Republican leaders are advancing a plan to add nearly $250 million more to the state’s Opportunity Scholarship voucher program – but public education advocates are urging the state to keep that money in the public schools, or at least to require more accountability from the private schools who receive the voucher funds.
Recently, the Public School Forum of North Carolina released its annual North Carolina Education Policy primer. The Forum bills the primer as a non-partisan overview of education policy and the current state of public education, produced to inform lawmakers as well as the general public. Among other findings, the primer highlights one striking statistic: North Carolina ranks 49th out of the 50 states in terms of the percentage of GDP devoted to public education.
Click here to read the entire document.
97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck recently spoke with Mary Ann Wolf, the Public School Forum’s president and executive director.
Click here to listen to their conversation. The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Aaron Keck: What should people take away from the report?
Mary Ann Wolf: I think in North Carolina, many people care deeply about public education, and yet it’s complex in terms of who’s responsible for what. In North Carolina, the state has more responsibility for public education than most (other) states. In our constitution, the state is supposed to cover our operational or instructional expenses, (and) local counties are supposed to cover our capital expenses.
Keck: Capital expenses being the buildings, the maintenance, the facilities, right?
Wolf: Yes, exactly. And we know in Orange County in particular, our county goes well beyond that and contributes significantly to operating (costs) – but it is the state’s responsibility to do that, and not all counties have the ability to contribute the way Orange does. And our state is actually very low, in terms of how much we put into public education. We are 49th out of 50, in terms of the percentage of our GDP that we invest in public education. There is only one state lower than us, Arizona.
Keck: You know, we talk about all the states that, “oh, they just don’t care about public education at all,” and they’re always in the very bottom of the rankings: the Mississippis, the Alabamas, the West Virginias – and they’re better than us, in terms of the percentage of money that we have available that we’re spending on public education. That jumped out to me when I was reading this document. And it’s really striking and staggering.
Wolf: It is staggering. And we see business leaders’ eyes get very big, and jaws drop, when they hear that. Because education is important for kids and families, but also for our workforce, our future workforce, and our economy. And we need to continue to build that. So that investment is truly an investment in our kids and in our future in North Carolina.
Keck: So what would it look like, if instead of 49th, we were 39th? Not even in the top 10, just not that close to the bottom.
Wolf: There are amazing things happening in our public schools, but often it is off the backs of our teachers, trying to do everything we can with very little. We know that with more investment, our teachers would be able to focus even more on instruction. Our schools could focus more on the individual needs of our students. We could reach all students and provide the services that our schools are looked to do. Investment, in the right things, will lead to stronger outcomes.
Right now, Aaron, a third of our teachers make below a livable wage in North Carolina. Think about that. These are people who have college degrees, who have given their lives to education, and a third of them are making below the livable wage in North Carolina. All those states you mentioned, they have made staggering improvements to beginning teacher pay in the last couple of years. We’ve made some improvements, but it is still not nearly enough so that our teachers are able to really thrive and focus on that one job.
Keck: And one of the other statistics (here) is that teacher pay is down over the last couple of years, if you adjust for inflation. Every time we talk about teacher pay, I always think back to when I was in high school – this was Michigan, not North Carolina – but we had this great history teacher, Ms. Hightower, we loved her…and we would leave school and we would go to the mall, to Montgomery Ward’s, where she was working in the electronics section. Because even then, you needed multiple jobs to make ends meet, if you were a teacher. And it seems like that’s just getting worse and worse and worse.
Wolf: It is. And we know there’s a teacher pay penalty, right? We know that teachers who graduate with a degree, they do make less than their peers who go into other fields. But right now in North Carolina, that (penalty) is 24.5 percent. And we want to be able to attract the best and the brightest into education. We want to support those educators so they can do the professional job they’re hired to. More investment (from) the state would help that, and we know that only improves outcomes for students.
Keck: Opportunity Scholarship vouchers are a central part of the conversation right now. What does this document say about them?
Wolf: The State Senate (recently) voted to take everyone off the wait list of for those vouchers now that it is open to any income, (spending) an additional $248 million. And 18 percent of those families on the wait list actually make more than $259,000 a year. But what’s really (covered) in this primer is the fact that North Carolina (would have) basically the least accountability for vouchers. Any (private) school can get vouchers, you can be a very small school, big school, religious school, you can discriminate, and the only thing you have to do is report annual test scores – if you have more than 25 students in a grade receiving vouchers. Last year, if we applied those accountability laws, only 3 percent of schools that got vouchers would have had to report anything…
These are taxpayer funded vouchers, going to private schools that do not have any accountability, don’t have to have certified teachers, and can discriminate against students. And we know we have a lot of needs in our state where this money could be used very differently.
Keck: Where do you think the funding priorities should be?
Wolf: I think we need to invest in what we know makes a difference for kids. We know that every child needs a highly qualified, well-prepared teacher in their classroom. We know that we need an excellent principal in every school to support them. We know early childhood education is so important. With that $248 million, we could increase every single teacher’s pay by more than 3.5 percent across the board. We could also add 575 positions for school counselors, nurses, social workers, and psychologists, and 700 more TA’s, and get more teachers nationally board certified. We also could help early childhood survive the ESSER cliff – (a lot of) childcare centers will be closing because of that. And we could provide 37,000 additional spots for Pre-K, as well as supports for after school. So that same amount of money could be used in all those ways.
Keck: What’s the ESSER cliff?
Wolf: So during COVID, there were additional funds provided by the federal government. (Those funds will expire) very quickly. And with those going away, school districts are really having to debate what to cut…I think people tried to prepare well for this, but it’s still a decrease. And I think our state, with (a $1 billion) surplus, could help support that by investing in the things that we know matter.
Keck: You mentioned the lack of accountability for vouchers. So what would accountability look like?
Wolf: One thing is (that) schools should be accredited. How do we make sure that these schools are doing what is good for kids? Schools should (also) not be able to discriminate against students, whether for religion, race, LGBTQ…(and) we also believe there should be an avenue for teacher certification. You (should) have certified teachers in your schools, but you also should have to comply with the same outcome-based requirements that our public schools do. Take the same test that our public school students take. And other states are doing this: if you look at Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, they all have stronger outcome and accountability measures than North Carolina. I think only Arizona has had less, and they’ve had a lot of fraud.
So we should be able to know: where’s the money going, what’s the money being spent on, (and) how are your students doing? There’s not a lot of research, but the research that we have shows that (when) public school students get vouchers and go to private schools, their outcomes go down. So we need to make sure that every kid in North Carolina is taken care of. And part of that is accountability.
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