Fact Check: State House Democrats claim NC ranks last in K-12 funding

It’s time for a fact-check of North Carolina politics. This week we’re looking at a claim made by Democrats about how North Carolina ranks in education funding. A February tweet from NC House Democrats, the account for the House Democratic Caucus, claims “North Carolina ranks LAST in the country in K-12 funding.” To find out if it’s true, we turn now to Paul Specht of WRAL.

Marshall Terry: First Paul, why did House Democrats tweet this? What’s the context here?

Paul Specht: Well, it was in response to a tweet by the North Carolina Republican Party. They tweeted that national test results and elementary school reading and math had plummeted in recent years. And then the House Democrats retweeted that with their response, saying North Carolina ranks last in the country in K-12 funding. And in North Carolina, this is often at the very center of budget negotiations, right? How much funding will public grade schools get? How much of a raise will teachers get? So there's, sort, of a long history here of Republicans putting forth this budget since they've had control of the legislature for now, what? Ten, 12 years. And the Democrats saying, hey, this isn't enough, do more. This tweet stuck out to us, though, because this is the first time I had seen the claim that North Carolina ranks last in the country.

Terry: Well, is it true what they said? What’s their source on that?

Specht: The Democrats sent us a link to a Daily Tar Heel newspaper article about a study done by the Education Law Center. Now, the Education Law Center is a reputable education research group. And they look at three different metrics for how education is funded in each state across the country. They look at something called funding level, funding distribution and then funding effort. Distribution looks at are funds being distributed equitably. Funding level is more sort of a gross look at like how much money is going there. And then funding effort looks at the funding compared to each state's gross domestic product, or GDP. And that last one is what the Education Law Center ranked North Carolina last in.

Terry: Where did the center rank North Carolina in terms of those other ones, funding levels and funding distribution?

Specht: This is where we start to see a bigger picture here. North Carolina is not ranked last in funding level, which again looks at more of a per-student basis of funding, like how much are we investing in each student compared to other states? And we ranked 48. There were all 50 states considered as well as Washington, D.C. So we were still ahead of Idaho, Utah and Arizona. And then when it comes to funding distribution, again, how well are we distributing these funds, especially in school districts with high poverty? North Carolina came in 19th, so not the bottom of the barrel there. So even within this study, we are not ranked last in every category. In examining this, the problems sort of compound from there. This study did come out in late 2022. However, it's a study of budget funding levels from the 2019-20 school year. So the tweet said North Carolina ranks last in the country in K-12 funding. That's sort of an active, present tense. Well, this study is based on funding levels from three years ago. Now, this is the most recent study done by the Education Law Center, but it would not give the full picture, because just last year, Roy Cooper signed a budget primarily crafted by Republicans. So the picture has changed and we don't know what our standing would look like compared to other states.

Terry: I want to go back to the funding effort measure for a second. That’s the one where the center found North Carolina does indeed rank last. Using that measure, funding effort, West Virginia, one of the lowest-achieving states, ranks near the top, according to the center. But Massachusetts, one of the best-performing states, ranks at the bottom. How could that be?

Specht: Well, it looks at each state's capacity to fund education based on their GDP, right? And so the Education Law Center pointed out, like Massachusetts is a very successful state economically. So while they might get an F for effort, their per-pupil funding is above the national average. They pointed out that Massachusetts can generate high funding levels with ease, whereas other states not so much.

Terry: Well, all the wonkiness of this aside, it seems like there are just really a lot of different ways to rate something like how we rank on education funding, even though it seems like that should be fairly simple, right?

Specht: It would seem like that. But like you said, there's so many ways to measure it. It's hard to reach a consensus. There have been multiple studies that look at education funding in different ways. And this is the only one we found with North Carolina at the bottom. And it was in funding effort, not in funding level or per-pupil funding.

Terry: How did you rate the claim in this tweet?

Specht: The statement was North Carolina ranks last in the country in K-12 funding. It's backed up by one outdated study from 2019 and 2020, and we could not find any other credible research showing that North Carolina might be ranked last in funding. We might be near the bottom, but we're not at the bottom. And so with all that extra context taken into consideration, we rated this mostly false. There's a small element of truth, but the tweet or the claim ignores critical facts that would give people a different impression.