#NCED Updates: Per Pupil Spending, Whiplash and Higher Ed news

This installment of NC Ed updates includes the lastest per-pupil spending figures in North Carolina as well as the whiplash induced by Tom Campbell’s education articles and some higher Ed news and general headlines.

Before kicking things off, Mark Johnson finally made an announcement about running in 2020. He will be running for Lt. Governor and not running for reelection as State Superintendent.

#1 – Per Pupil Spending Figures

Via Dr. Terry Stoops at the John Locke Foundation, the most up to date (2018-19) per-pupil spending rates are now out.

State funds: $6,479.36 ($6,153.92 in 2017-18)
Federal funds: $975.38 ($1,018.14 in 2017-18)
Local funds: $2,410.30 ($2,306.31 in 2017-18)
Total funds: $9,865.04 ($9,478.37 in 2017-18)
Capital (5-year average): $750.01 ($627.02 in 2017-18)

State, local, and capital funds are increasing, while federal funds are dropping. In fact, 2014 was the last year that federal funds dropped below $1,000 per student.

Rest assured, sometime in the coming week the NCAE will say that nearly $10k per student is not enough but will offer no acceptable dollar amount.

Flashback: Eye-Popping Numbers On Admin Bloat vs Student Growth

#2 – Getting whiplash from Tom Campbell’s education articles

In an August article, Campbell smeared charter schools as “resegregating” public schools.

Campbell was quickly taken to task for that outrageous and false claim in both local and national papers. (See section 3 and section 1 for those rebuttals.)

Now this month, he’s outraged that according to the recent NAEP results, public schools are failing to teach our kids basic reading and math and hails the advice on how to fix it from Success Academy Charter School’s Eva Moskowitz.

Not only that, Campbell talks about how it’s not the amount of funding, but how it’s being spent. But don’t be fooled. Read to the very end:

This column isn’t intended to be an unqualified endorsement of Moskowitz’s methods, but her schools demonstrate diversity in race and sex, ethnic backgrounds, income ranges and geography; their results are impressive. They can be lifted up as examples where people were not satisfied with static to declining results.

The big question that North Carolina needs to answer is whether we have the political or collective will to do what is needed to make our schools excellent.

As a recent attendee to the left-leaning Public School First NC’s forum on the school choice bashing session decrying the “privatization of public schools,” I recognize these paragraphs as an overture to alter school choice in North Carolina to no choice.