Many of the headlines about Tuesday's end of the General Assembly session featured House Speaker Joe Hackney's assertion that lawmakers had saved public education.
That's a bit of an exaggeration but to be fair Hackney's full statement was the General Assembly had "saved education and its core mission from what could have been severe jeopardy." That's probably true.
The decision to raise $990 million in new revenue allowed budget writers to restore some of the most egregious cuts to public schools like the proposed increase in class size in grades K-3, the elimination of 3rd-grade teaching assistants, and the absence of funding to help struggling schools improve.
That helped stave off severe jeopardy, but schools are still scrambling to cope with cuts that were made, most notably a $225 million reduction that local education officials will have to come up with. It is likely to mean larger classes in grades four and above and layoffs of teachers and support personnel.
That may not be severe jeopardy, but it is jeopardy nonetheless.
The cuts come on the heels of the release of the results from the state's standardized testing program, the ABCs of Public Education. The program evaluates schools based on the percentage of students that meet proficiency standards, the progress made each year, and how specific sub groups of students designated by federal law perform.
The state testing program has been marred by several missteps since it began 13 years ago but it does provide a numerical assessment of every school, so it receives close attention from parents and community leaders.
The percentage of schools that met or exceeded growth expectations was just over 80 percent, roughly the same as the year before. The percentage of schools that met the federal goals increased to 71 percent, up 40 percent from last year.
Much of that increase may have come from the second chance students in grades 3-8 had to take the tests if they struggled the first time.
Past ABC results have found a direct correlation between a school's performance and the percentage of students eligible for free reduced lunch. That breakdown is not yet available from the Department of Public Instruction this year, but the correlation is almost certain to be strong again based on the performance of school systems in the state's poorest areas.
Only three of the 14 schools in Halifax County met growth goals. Only one of them met the higher growth standard set by the program. Almost half the schools in Robeson County did not meet their expected growth, a long way from the 80 percent statewide.
The ABC s also measure high school graduation rates. Just over 71 percent of students that enter the ninth grade earn a diploma four years later. That's up slightly, but still only 63 percent of African-American students graduate.
That means four in ten don't, all but guaranteeing a life of struggle. There is a strong correlation between poverty and graduation too.
The passage of the final state budget also comes not long after the release of the latest Kids Count Data Book that measures how children in each state are doing based on ten indicators.
North Carolina ranks 37th in the country and improved slightly in several of the categories, but not the percentage of children who live in poverty. The report says that one in five children in North Carolina lives in families that struggle below the poverty line and the study was based on 2007 data, well before the economic crisis began.
It's a safe bet that the poverty figures are much worse now. That's one thing missing from Hackney's critique of how the General Assembly did protecting public education. It's missing from almost every discussion of how to help struggling kids do better in school.
The best way to help poor students do well in the classroom is to help their families lift themselves out of poverty. That's why the cuts to human services programs must be part of the evaluation of well how lawmakers did to help students.
This session's public education budget may not have put schools in severe jeopardy, but the state's increasing poverty rates keep putting more families in it, and that means more kids facing more obstacles in their struggle to learn.
