Weekly Briefing

It's time for the state to calculate the cost of providing all kids with a sound basic education 

Eleven years ago, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued what appeared, at the time, to be one of the most important rulings in its more than two centuries of operation. In the 1997 case of Hoke County Board of Education v. State of North Carolina and State Board of Education - often commonly referred to as the Leandro ruling - the court established the constitutional right of every North Carolina public school student to a "sound basic education."

In a subsequent series of evidentiary hearings, Superior Court Judge Howard Manning formally ruled that the State had failed to live up to its constitutional responsibility and began to issue specific directives and demands of state officials in order to make the requirements of the Constitution a reality. In 2004, the state Supreme Court reaffirmed the basic premises of the original 1997 decision and most of Judge Manning's specific actions.

Unfortunately, despite Manning's energetic and mostly commendable efforts over the past decade, the bright initial promise of Leandro remains largely unfulfilled. While there has been some incremental progress in some areas, the central problem remains. Too many children - mostly low income and with a high proportion of racial minorities (but not at all exclusively) - are failing to receive a sound basic education.

This conclusion is borne out by an array of sobering facts and statistics - from the generally low quality of facilities, teacher performance and retention rates in many areas to the overall quality of student performance as measured by standardized tests and dropout rates.

What's the problem?

The challenges and roadblocks confronting Manning and the state officials that he alternately cajoles and makes demands of are, of course, immense. North Carolina is a large and rapidly growing state that is attempting to effect an enormous economic and social transformation on the fly - from a relatively poor rural state that relied upon a relatively low-tech manufacturing sector into a modern, high technology state.

Add to this mix the lack of adequate resources and the legacy of 250+ years of racist policies, state-sponsored segregation and the forcible retention of a large proportion of the population in second class citizenship and it's not surprising that those who would implement the demands of Leandro have found it hard to do in short order.

Having said this, there is clearly room for significant improvement in how state leaders are attempting to live up to the constitution they have sworn to uphold. Chief among the failures thus far has been the frustrating unwillingness of most parties to attempt to grasp the true magnitude of the problem.

Like the proverbial blind men describing an elephant, North Carolina leaders continue to devote the vast majority of their attention to relatively specific symptoms rather than the broader picture. Hence finding after finding and proposal after proposal trumpets the latest "magic bullet": the state needs more good principals; the state needs more rigorous standards; the state needs to provide more help for struggling kids; the state needs to provide more help for gifted kids; the state needs to do more for low wealth counties, for kids with limited English proficiency and so on.

Meanwhile, at the General Assembly, all of these worthy proposals compete with each other and hundreds of others in a budget that's barely keeping up with the demands of inflation and a booming population. The result, not surprisingly, is a trickle of half measures and piecemeal solutions. Lawmakers allocate a few million dollars more for this and a few million more for that and then make grand promises and demands of local officials. Add to this equation the ceaseless braying of the radical, anti-public education crowd and their noisy demands to cut education spending and one has a recipe for stagnation and stalemate.

Time to step back and assess the big picture 

Though far from a sure thing, the only realistic means of escape from the political box that currently traps and holds back the state's K-12 education system is for state leaders (and others who really care about making public education work) to take a step back, remove their blinders, and examine the entire elephant. Unless North Carolina has a practical and comprehensive estimate of what it might really cost to build a modern and successful 21^st Century education system, it is simply unrealistic to expect that even a smart and well-meaning judge will be, on his own, able to patch together anything approximating a comprehensive solution - especially one that's built to last.

Last week, the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center released a special "BTC Reports" entitled "What does a sound basic education system cost? It is time to find out." The report reiterated what more and more education experts in North Carolina and around the country are saying: to have any hope of fixing its public schools, a state must first have a comprehensive picture of what it will cost. Absent such information, there is simply no way to construct a plan of attack - much less build the political will - to bring about the wholesale improvements that are necessary.

Fortunately, as the report points out, North Carolina is far from the first state to make this discovery. In fact, 39 states across the country have already undertaken what are commonly referred to as "costing out studies." According to the report, such studies address funding issues in a comprehensive way, by:

• Defining what an adequate or sound and basic education should be,
• Identifying what is required to deliver that education to all children, and
• Costing out that delivery.

To put together such a comprehensive study, the state can choose from a menu of quantitative and qualitative techniques. The former generally rely upon (and extrapolate from) statistics from successful schools and students populations, while the latter emphasize the expertise of education professionals and/or academic researchers to design the best programs and curricula.

Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses and the BTC report actually recommends a combination approach. According to the report, "Any study should aim to use multiple methodologies. This has several advantages, including:

• The results are more defensible because critics cannot charge that they are solely due to the choice of a particular methodological approach.
• Deficiencies in one approach are covered by strengths in another.
• Differing results will lead to discussion of those differences - a discussion that will highlight the important, the controversial and the mutually agreed elements of an adequate education."

According to the report author, Dr. Stephen Jackson, experience in other states shows that such studies should be overseen by state officials:

"Studies initiated and completed by groups outside of government face enormous difficulty in gaining political traction. Experience from other states shows that while outside studies have some political value in influencing budget discussions and outcomes, they have shown little ability to shift wholesale the terms of the education finance debate. State-initiated studies have had much more success, and court-ordered studies, as would be expected, have the best chance of being implemented."

Going forward

In essence, what the BTC and other experts around the country are saying is this: It's folly to think that North Carolina can bring about the kind of changes needed in K-12 education "on the cheap" or in piecemeal, patchwork fashion. Real, long-term reconstruction requires a thorough plan and an honest assessment of what it will really take to build what we need.

Even with a high quality costing out study, of course, North Carolina may fail to muster the political courage to raise the necessary revenues. At least, however, such a study can provide the state with a set of specific goals and a roadmap to follow. We may not get there overnight, but at least we'll know where we're going. At last word, key lawmakers were working on the details of a proposal to make a costing-out study a reality in North Carolina. Let's hope the effort bears fruit in 2008.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 8:18 am and is filed under Weekly Briefing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.