Saving North Carolina’s Public Education System
How to Stop Those Who Would Betray the State’s Children and Future
As part of its work on public education in America, Civic Way is taking a closer look at one state—North Carolina. This is the 16th and final essay in Civic Way’s series on North Carolina’s primary and secondary education system (see the last essay). The author, Bob Melville, is the founder of Civic Way, a nonprofit dedicated to good government, and a management consultant with over 45 years of experience improving public agencies.
ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution. – Ambrose Bierce
Strategies for Reforming North Carolina’s Public Education System (cont.)
In our initial essays, we outlined the major deficiencies of North Carolina’s K-12 public education system and the most critical threats to its long-term viability. In this essay, and several preceding essays, we have presented an agenda with some public education reform strategies for the consideration of all North Carolinians.
To ensure a sound education for all—the state’s constitutional duty—North Carolinians must work together. Not one party, but both. State and local leaders. Not just metro areas, but small rural towns and counties. A diverse state with divergent views must overcome its differences to build a public education system for everyone.
1. Revamp and Strengthen the State’s Current Accountability System.
North Carolina needs a new education accountability program, one that assesses the quality of all schools receiving public funds. The good news is that the state already has an extensive accountability system for traditional public schools. That system has some flaws, but it offers a suitable foundation for the next generation school accountability system, one that can be used for all publicly funded schools.
Improving the current system should begin with a consensus on the criteria it should fulfill. For starters, those criteria should include comprehensiveness, cost-effectiveness, fairness, accessibility and comparability. The system should measure the full range of factors underlying a school’s quality, including any progress toward attaining that quality. It should fairly reflect the challenges that individual face. It should be efficient and easy to use. It should facilitate the comparison of North Carolina schools to one another, and to those in other states and nations.
The most challenging criterion is comprehensiveness. The system must provide a full picture of each school’s quality. School accreditation status, staff turnover, facility condition, academics, financial stability and local reputation. Teacher credentials and performance. Student skills, achievement scores, post-graduate attainment levels and community engagement. And progress, the measurable strides that a school or student make from year to year.
The state accountability system, including the North Carolina Dashboard, should enable state officials, school boards and administrators, teachers and parents to easily:
Track and assess aggregate student metrics (e.g., chronic absenteeism, test performance and improvement, English language proficiency, adjusted cohort graduation rate, college readiness, career readiness and long-term student outcomes)
Track and assess aggregate and individual principal metrics (e.g., experience, credentials, aggregate school performance and progress, personal evaluation scores, tenure and turnover)
Track and assess aggregate and individual teacher metrics (e.g., licensing, certification, advanced degree, experience, academic specialization, classroom performance and progress, absenteeism, tenure and turnover)
Isolate and appreciate progress metrics for high-poverty schools and other schools serving disadvantaged students (e.g., school climate, chronic absenteeism, student suspensions and expulsions, extended-year graduation rates and readiness programs)
The revamped state accountability system should build on the best features of the current system. It should be aligned with federal reporting requirements. It should facilitate easy comparison with as many other states as possible. It should require all schools to provide sufficient data to assess outcomes—and progress—for individual children, child subgroups (e.g., geographic, demographic and grade), every school and every educational program.
The system should enable the courts to monitor the state’s compliance with the Leandro settlement standards. In addition, the state should fund an independent panel of educational experts, under the State Board of Education’s authority, to help the courts monitor state policies, plans, programs and progress, and ensure the state’s compliance with Leandro requirements
2. Ensure Public Accountability for all Publicly Funded Schools.
Every North Carolina school receiving public funds should be subject to sufficient public rules, regulations and oversight to ensure the prudent use of those funds. That is not the case today.
Several fundamental accountability principles should apply to all publicly funded schools, including the following:
Every charter and Opportunity Scholarship (OS) private school should earn the right to receive public funds
The application, contract, renewal, probation and revocation criteria should be clear and consistent (e.g., performance, organizational and fiscal metrics)
The application, contract, renewal, probation and revocation processes should be transparent and consistent
Every charter and publicly-funded private school should have an authorized independent sponsor, such as a Local Education Agency (LEA), public university, community college, or county
There should be one state entity—the State Board of Education (SBE)—with overall authority for approving, renewing or terminating charter and publicly-funded OS schools and sponsors
The North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA) should require all publicly funded schools to comply with certain core standards (e.g., ethics, public records, open meetings and state-mandated student reporting). The NCGA should authorize the SBE to establish tough penalties and sanctions for any schools—public or private—violating state standards. The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) should ensure the completion of regular financial and performance reviews of every participating school. DPI and LEAs should be empowered to enforce state standards and post any public findings.
In addition, the state should institute measures tailored to the unique characteristics of public charter schools and publicly funded private schools, measures that will help ensure that public funds are responsibly used to meet the state’s constitutional obligations for public education.
First, the state should fortify charter school accountability. County commissions or school boards should have a role in approving, monitoring and closing public charter schools. Every charter school should be required to meet basic operating standards (e.g., SBE-approved accreditation, sound financial practices and internal controls). All entities seeking a new or renewed public school charter should have a recent independent risk assessment or audit. Any entity with outstanding or pending negative audit findings—or an unverifiable track record—should be denied a charter.
Second, the state should hold publicly funded private schools accountable for the funds they receive. This will require participating private schools to comply with standards they may find onerous. Accreditation. Compatible instructional time. A curriculum aligned with the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. Teacher certification. Employee background checks. All state-required data, including data needed to assess school performance and help parents make school choice decisions.
There has been extensive reporting about the federal pandemic relief programs. The easy availability of money. The inadequacy of controls. The extent of fraud. The difficulties of recovering misspent funds. These concerns are well-founded, but they often overlook the extraordinary conditions that precipitated the relief programs. The US economy and millions of lives were at stake.
North Carolina’s OS program raises similar questions about accountability but there is an important difference. The proposed expansion of the OS program is driven by no public health or safety emergency. Rather, it appears to be the product of magical thinking, an ill-conceived initiative more likely to trigger a crisis than prevent one. Before the NCGA throws money at private schools and homeschools, it must first ensure public accountability for those expenditures.
Accountability should be the lynchpin of every government program. Evading it, no matter the reason, is a virtual invitation for waste, self-dealing and fraud.
Taking the Bipartisan Road to Education Reform
The NCGA’s current path will upend decades of steady bipartisan progress.
Vilifying and underfunding public schools, throwing money at ill-conceived, untested boondoggles, and dodging accountability will not end well. Blowing up a public education system and the work of thousands of dedicated public servants will squander public funds, suppress school choices and hurt children, many irrevocably. And children won’t be the only casualties. The state’s economy and democracy will suffer, too.
The future demands a more constructive path. One that sets aside ideology and partisan politics and puts the future of children and democracy first. One that seeks common ground from diverse opinions. One that forges practical solutions from evidence, debate and compromise. One that affords all children a real opportunity for a sound education.
A childcare system that supports workers, businesses and economic growth. An early childhood education system that prepares children for academic achievement. A primary and secondary education system that prepares young people for citizenship and success. A bright future for North Carolina.
The civic obligation could not be clearer. If some—knowingly or not—have set a course to steal the next generation’s future, they must be stopped at the polls and in the halls of government.
And that crusade must commence now.
In this essay, we present strategies for strengthening accountability systems for public education. In our next series, we will examine public education from a national perspective.