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Early voting has begun, and North Carolinians are turning out in droves at the polls. It’s a big year for the state’s midterm elections — voters get to decide if the GOP will keep its legislative supermajority and if six of their constitutional amendments will pass.

On Monday night of this week, acclaimed education researcher Richard Rothstein spoke to community members at Epworth United Methodist Church in Durham. Rothstein opened his talk with an uncontroversial, yet under-appreciated, fact: social and economic characteristics of children are the primary predictors of student achievement.

Chief US District Judge Terrence Boyle, a New Jersey-born jurist known for his bristly disposition and barbed wit, asked a simple but loaded question in a Raleigh courtroom yesterday: "Who's going to teach these wolves to swim?"

More than two dozen people crowded into a conference room at the North Carolina Judicial Center Wednesday for the first meeting of the Pretrial Working Group Subcommittee of the NC Courts Commission.

If North Carolina goes forward with the recommendation to allow a private charter operator to take control of a Goldsboro elementary school, they should expect a protracted resistance, the school’s principal told Policy Watch Wednesday.

Early voting starts today, which means North Carolinians will finally get to decide on six proposed constitutional amendments, including one that would bolster victims’ rights.

The legislature expedited its first round of disaster relief funding for the state's critical recovery needs after Hurricane Florence, but the more complex portion of the aid package -- environmental resilience -- could run into political roadblocks.

There are a lot of strange – even downright bizarre – aspects to the ongoing effort by North Carolina Republican legislators to pass a slate of six constitutional amendments during this fall’s election. There is, for instance, the absurd dearth of process...

The power of the vote extends beyond any single electoral outcome. It has the potential to lift up important community issues, reorient the priorities of those elected to the interests of the people, and support an engagement process that extends into the policymaking process.

The following set of figures comes from the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities' new report: Unkept Promises: State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Access and Equity.

For more than four months, the Guilford County school system failed to disclose critical information about high lead levels in three of its schools -- not only from the public, but also from the respective principals, according to documents obtained under the Public Records Act.

If Janice Franklin has an extra $10 to spare, she’s not thinking about using it to buy a photo identification so she can vote.

“If I get $10 in my hand, I’m going to get a prescription or food because I probably had to hold off to pay the light bill,” she said.

The UNC Board of Governors is changing the process by which it selects chancellors for UNC system schools. The new process will be more confidential, include more rigorous background checks.

When lawmakers convene next week for a second special session of the North Carolina General Assembly focused on Hurricane Florence disaster relief, they will be facing daunting challenges and hard choices.

Long after the presidents, and the governors, and the press conferences cease, and the swollen rivers of our state subside, will North Carolina be there for those students displaced by Hurricane Florence?

It would be bad enough if North Carolina’s junior senator, Thomas “Thom” Tillis, had merely voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime appointment on the U.S. Supreme Court this past Saturday after hearing the heartrending testimony delivered by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. It was even worse that Tillis has attempted to justify his action...