Policy Update: North Carolina: Seeing a Payoff

Vital Statistics
118	Public school districts
1,997	Public schools
1.2million	K-12 enrollment
36.1%	Minority students
20%	Children in poverty
12.6%	Students with disabilities
$6.1 billion	Annual K-12 expenditures (all revenue sources)

Under the law, each school is given a goal for improving student performance on state tests, which are linked to the state's academic-content standards. Bonuses are awarded to teachers and other staff members in schools that exceed expectations.

Since the start of the 1997-98 school year, when the state dispatched assistance teams to the 15 elementary and middle schools with the most alarming deficits in achievement, significant progress has occurred.

All but one of the targeted schools met or exceeded the state's expectations on tests in reading and mathematics given to students in grades 3-8 last year. Thirteen were declared exemplary after surpassing the goals for improved student performance that the state set for each school.

The progress has state education leaders convinced that this latest effort to improve the Tar Heel State's 1,997 schools is working and that its tradition of start-and-stop reforms has been halted.

"The ABCs have really made a difference more than anything I've seen in our state," says John N. Dornan, the executive director of the Public School Forum of North Carolina, a nonprofit research center in Raleigh.

"The serious consequences in this plan were missing in other accountability programs. Principals and teachers are more concentrated on student outcomes than at any time in state history," he says.

The state's 416 high schools were included in the accountability program for the first time last year. Some 83 percent of secondary schools met or exceeded expectations for student performance on tests in algebra, biology, English, history, and economic, legal, and political systems.

Fifteen high schools were deemed low-performing, three of which will go under the supervision of state assistance teams.

According to the results released last summer, 1,132 elementary and middle schools, or about two-thirds, earned exemplary status on math and reading tests; 15 schools (different from the 15 cited from the previous year) were identified as low-performing.

"The success of these schools says that where you have clearly defined, measurable goals, people will work hard to achieve them," says Phillip J. Kirk Jr., a longtime business leader who took over as the chairman of the state school board in late 1997.

"We've targeted additional resources and helped shine the spotlight on schools that aren't doing so well," Kirk says. "We've proven that all children can learn."

Teachers and other staff members at exemplary schools were awarded up to $1,500 each, thanks to a $25 million bonus plan financed by the legislature last year.

The lawmakers also approved a second round of salary hikes, expected to total about $1 billion over the next three years, to bring teachers' salaries up to the national average.

Teachers chalked up another victory when they successfully stalled plans for testing all those teaching in the lowest-performing schools.

Union officials at the state level promised a lawsuit if the testing went forward, and the 250 teachers, administrators, and counselors who were scheduled to take the competency exams threatened a boycott.

The legislature compromised just days before the exam was to be administered and amended the law, ensuring that no one would be tested for the next two years and adding more steps to firing ineffective teachers.

"Teachers can still be tested, but only after evaluations find them not only lacking in good teaching methodology, but in content and general knowledge," says Tom Houlihan, an education adviser to Democratic Gov. James B. Hunt Jr.

"The threat of indiscriminate testing was considered punitive and caused more morale problems and grief than it was worth," Houlihan says.

Although the changes received widespread support at the Statehouse in Raleigh, some lawmakers who demanded the teacher-accountability measures in the initial legislation were outraged at the effort to "water down" the law.

"Now, there are many more hoops and hurdles to go through and over to discharge an incompetent teacher," contends Republican Sen. Hamilton C. "Ham" Horton Jr., who voted against the revisions.

But many observers say that the law still has teeth and that the state is committed to getting extra resources and support to the schools that need it most.

The governor, school leaders, and the state university and community college systems have joined in a new effort to rally more money and services for all the state's struggling schools.

As part of the effort, called NC helps, low-performing schools will be matched with businesses, higher education institutions, and state agencies for technical help.

Some schools could qualify for grants of up to $100,000 to design and implement reforms. Money for the program will come from existing federal grants and fund-raising efforts.

With a new 10th grade test in math and reading that students must pass to graduate, administered for the first time last spring, the path to a diploma is becoming more difficult.

And a committee was appointed last year to set promotion benchmarks for various grade levels and high school graduation standards.

A 1994 lawsuit by five low-wealth districts claiming that the state has failed to pay for the basic education needs of their students is still awaiting trial, and finance reform is on hold until that case is resolved.

Meanwhile, all the state's 118 districts--which rely on the state for an average of 70 percent of their funding--are benefiting from a nearly 10 percent increase in the education budget. And a $182 million state bond issue is being used to build new schools and repair aging structures.

"We are building schools so fast, they are going up like mushrooms all over the state," Houlihan says. The 132 new buildings and 767 additions and renovations to existing schools generally will not mean an expansion of the state's class-size-reduction effort, which has not received additional funding this school year.

During the past three years, the initiative has led to widespread declines of about four pupils per classroom in grades 1-3 statewide, cutting the student-to-teacher ratio to about 22-to-1.

The state has a growing cadre of charter schools, which reached 61 in the 1997-98 school year under a 2-year-old law that allows for 100 such institutions. Some lawmakers are pushing initiatives to remove the cap on the number, while others are seeking to limit the number of charters even more.

Education technology continues to get limited funding. The state's school technology fund, created several years ago after a study estimated it would cost as much as $100 million a year for five years to bring schools into the computer age, is expected to get only about $12 million this year.

Accountability will continue to maintain its position at the top of the state's priority list, observers say.

As districts adapt their curricula and teachers focus their instructional strategies to bring more students up to acceptable levels of achievement, the program is expected to lead to even more improvements in the years to come.

"We are getting some assurance that we are headed in the right direction," Dornan of the Public School Forum says.

"There is a good deal more cohesion around the accountability plan than there had been in the past.... There is a lot of optimism around education in this state," he says.