North Carolina School Funding, Accountability, and Student Achievement Gains

Power Point Presentation by John Poteat
Director of Research
Public School Forum of North Carolina

On February 6, 2004, at the fourth annual Education Adequacy conference in Alexandria, Virginia, John Poteat, Director of Research, Public School Forum of North Carolina, provided an informative presentation on North Carolina's school funding system and its accountability system and, also, briefly compared certain aspects of the accountability system with the NCLB approach.

We asked John to speak, at least in part, because North Carolina has been a leader in education reform and improved student achievement for the last decade or so. Advocates in other states who want to bring about similar reforms will do well to look carefully at North Carolina to help inform their efforts. John's remarks and accompanying power point slides were particularly helpful because he first discussed the recent history and context of school funding and accountability reform in North Carolina.

The two-day conference, Education Adequacy: Strategies for Achieving Reform in Difficult Times, was co-sponsored by ACCESS (part of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, Inc.) and by the National School Boards Association and included panel presentations and discussions on such critical education issues as:

Costing Out an Adequate Education
Building Coalitions: Reaching out to the Faith Community, School Board Associations, and Urban/Rural Constituencies
Developing Accountability Systems for Education Adequacy
Advocacy Strategies: Reports from the Field, and
Litigation Strategies.

Prepared March 19, 2004 by Molly A. Hunter