Dive Brief:
- A hearing on a long-running education case revealed deep disagreements between North Carolina education officials and district leaders about what it takes to ensure a quality education.
- The hearing was the latest in the Leandro case; earlier this month, the state submitted a plan to correct its "educational deficiencies," which local school boards and former education officials termed insufficient at the hearing.
- State Superintendent Rebecca Garland defended North Carolina's education system, saying the state had made every effort to ensure high quality teachers were present in every classroom.
Dive Insight:
There’s been a recent spate of lawsuits tying students' access to a good education to resource availability and teacher quality, including the Vergara suit in California and Kansas' ongoing legal battles over funding. In North Carolina, former administrators cited a lack of resources as a key reason for inadequate school quality. But Garland disagreed, saying it was a question of resource allocation, not availability.
"There are plenty of resources out in school systems that could be redirected in order to serve students in a different way," she said. "So it's hard for me to say it takes more resources when I'm not sure that all the resources that are there are being used as effectively as they could be used."
That divide has split open in other communities as some, especially in the charter community, place poor school quality at the feet of inefficient district and school bureaucracies. Judge Howard Manning appeared to refute that argument earlier this year, saying "If you have the teacher and the principal and if you have the resources you need in each classroom, you are constitutionally compliant and children will learn. And don't try to tell me that this is the case in North Carolina because it’s not." He asked the state to put forward a more concrete plan of action.