Few issues spark debate in North Carolina’s education circles like charter schools. Save for school vouchers and the state’s long-running Leandro school funding lawsuit, few topics that stir a higher level of passion. Supporters, many of whom are conservative voters, see charters as "school choice" options that help families looking to flee low-performing schools.
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public education
The latest WRAL documentary dives into the facts of the case, its impact on students in North Carolina and why there could finally be a resolution. Click below to listen to our interview with documentary producer Cristin Severance. Watch the full Leandro documentary here.
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In January, Governor Roy Cooper surprised many by issuing an official proclamation recognizing School Choice Week. The proclamation had long been a priority of school choice advocates in North Carolina such as the North Carolina Association for Public Charter Schools, which viewed the gesture as “an olive branch.”
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Critical Race Theory and face mask mandates dominated the state’s education headlines in 2021, even as students and teachers struggled to recover from a year of remote learning that saw standardized test scores fall to new lows. Racial and economic inequities in education, exposed by the pandemic, were quickly shoved to the background by a loud minority of irate parents who complained...
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North Carolina Award recipient Dudley Flood reflects on a lifetime of combating segregation and improving public schools At age 90, Dr. Dudley Flood, an education trailblazer who helped North Carolina’s public schools to integrate, can easily recall attending an all-Black high school. It was more than 75 years ago in tiny Winton, a town of fewer than 800 residents in Hertford County.
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Fresh off the controversy at UNC, the Howard journalism professor pulls few punches in talk to North Carolina schools group After four years of President Donald Trump, a global pandemic and a culture war fueled by the false narrative that Critical Race Theory (CRT) is taught in public schools, educators and their progressive allies are exhausted and understandably so, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones told attendees of the 2021 Color of Education Virtual Summit.
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It’s now been nearly a quarter-century since the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Leandro lawsuit that state leaders were violating the constitutional rights of thousands of schoolchildren – particularly in the state’s poorest counties – by failing to provide them with access to a sound basic education.
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It’s a common phenomenon for well-known politicians to become associated with, or remembered for, an inspiring or infamous utterance. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” “Ask not what your country can do for yourself. Ask what you can do for your country.” “Mr. Gorbachev: tear down this wall.” “I am not a crook.” And this doesn't apply just to presidents.
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The charter school movement began in earnest in North Carolina in 1997 when 34 schools opened across the state. There are now 200 charter schools in operation. The 1996 Charter School Act that established the system of tuition free, public schools that are not bound by many of the rules as traditional public schools was sponsored by Sen. Wib Gulley, a Democrat from Durham and Rep. Steve Wood, a Guilford County Republican.
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News item: Yesterday, the state defendants in the long running Leandro school finance case submitted a comprehensive plan to Judge David Lee that details how North Carolina proposes, at long last, to comply with the state Supreme Court’s 1997 ruling that every student in the state has a constitutional right to a “sound basic education.”
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