A Better Educated North Carolina

Today, December 10, 2024, Governor Roy Cooper and North Carolina State Superintendent-Elect Mo Green celebrated the progress made under his leadership to build a better educated North Carolina. The Governor visited Claxton Elementary School in Greensboro where he was joined by North Carolina State Superintendent-Elect Mo Green, teachers and state and local education leaders.

This is the second in a series of events highlighting the Governor’s major
accomplishments and progress made for North Carolina during his time in office.

Remarks as prepared:

Thank you for that introduction. Thank you to Claxton Elementary for hosting us. Today I’ve come to Guilford County to cap off a project we began last January — the Year of Public Schools in North Carolina.

It’s fitting we’re in Guilford as it’s also the home county of our newly elected Superintendent of Public Instruction Mo Green. He has and will continue to be a champion for our public schools.

There were lots of great choices to spotlight in my final year as governor. Health care. Infrastructure. Clean energy. Many important areas where we’ve made tremendous progress.

But I knew 2024 had to be the Year of Public Schools. Why? Public schools create opportunity.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that for the first time, provided federal funds to help underprivileged students. President Johnson said “Education is the key to opportunity in our society, and the equality of educational opportunity must be the birthright of every citizen.”

So when I think of education, I think of opportunity. Opportunity for a little girl living in a mobile home in northeastern North Carolina to become a doctor and find a cure for cancer. A little boy living in a little house in the mountains who’ll become the public school teacher who changes the lives of struggling students. A child from a poor single-parent family in Greensboro who’ll become an astronaut who goes to Mars. Opportunity.

In fact, leaders in North Carolina after the Civil War thought education was so important to recovery they wrote it into the state Constitution: “The people have a right to the privilege of education, and it is the duty of the State to guard and maintain that right.”

You know, education is the key to most every opportunity, and that’s why our public schools needed the spotlight this year. More than 80% of North Carolina’s school-aged children attend a public school and for good reason.

In the past eight years, North Carolina’s public schools have achieved the highest graduation rate in history — 87%.

North Carolina has more National Board-certified teachers than any state in America.

In the past four years, we’ve had the national school psychologist, counselor and superintendent of the year, and a finalist for national teacher of the year. That’s quite a line-up and representative of the kind of educators we have.

Our public schools are providing a career head start to the more than 100,000 graduates each year. Last year, public school students earned more than 325,000 workforce credentials. And about a third of our high school students take at least one college course before they graduate. Last year, our public schools set records in both how many students take AP courses and how many pass their AP exams.

Our public schools rock!

And another thing is that public schools are the glue that hold our communities together. Look no further than the response to Hurricane Helene. Teachers and principals called and visited student homes in Western NC to make sure all of them were accounted for. School buses evacuated people. Schools helped feed and sheltered folks who needed help in the harrowing days following the storm. And it wasn’t just schools in western North Carolina that stepped up. Fifty-three (53) school districts from across the state sent more than 260 school counselors and social workers to assist students and teachers in western NC when they returned to school. Schools are where the concerts, the dances, the games and the pancake suppers take place. So many of our communities especially in rural counties find their meaning in their public schools.

The place where opportunity happens. And that opportunity expands with our community colleges.

There are more than 600k students enrolled in our 58 community colleges. Many of them work full-time or part-time jobs and they’re looking to upgrade their skills for even better-paying jobs. I love how our community colleges provide that opportunity!

That’s important because over and over during my administration, we’ve told companies thinking about moving to North Carolina that our community college graduates will absolutely make their companies successful.

But in that process, we discovered many community college students who face financial challenges like an unexpected major car repair that forces them to drop out. Many students were close to getting their degree or certification when financial challenges stopped them. So we created Finish Line Grants that have helped more than 16,000 students finish the education and training they needed. Opportunity.

We also launched the Longleaf Commitment community college grant program to provide students from low- and middle-income families with support to cover tuition and most fees at any of our 58 community colleges. Opportunity.

But there’s the other side of the coin when it comes to public education, “Missed Opportunity.”

As many of you may know, North Carolina’s diabolically gerrymandered partisan legislative districts have resulted in a Republican-dominated legislature. I came into office eight years ago hoping to reach consensus with them about the importance of public education. And we made some progress.

In the early years, I pushed the legislature to give teachers higher salaries than they first proposed. They didn’t go along with everything I wanted, but because of our pressure, teacher pay is 19% higher today.

But over the last few years right wing groups and for profit schools have peddled a false narrative that our public schools are failing in North Carolina and our country. But they have it backward. State legislatures, including North Carolina’s are failing our public schools. Missed opportunity.

North Carolina’s Republican legislature the last few years has refused to keep pace with other states in teacher pay so thousands of teacher jobs went unfilled. Let’s be clear: that has caused our students to suffer. Missed opportunity.

The legislature has refused to sufficiently fund counselors and school nurses, which is devastating for the students who need to find this support at school. Missed opportunity.

Claxton Elementary has been able to do amazing work in this brand new school building. But Republican legislative leaders wouldn’t even consider a statewide bond referendum to renovate and build new schools in North Carolina, the third-fastest-growing state in the country. It’s put many of our students at a disadvantage in overcrowded and outdated classrooms. Missed opportunity.

But the biggest missed opportunity ironically co-ops that word, “Opportunity Scholarships,” otherwise known as taxpayer-funded private school vouchers for the wealthy, the right wing public school rip off. Just last month, the legislature gave $463 million of your tax dollars to higher income people, many of whom have already chosen private schools they can already afford. We could have used that money to pay our teachers more and invest in our public school students. I appreciate the work many private schools do and they have their place for a number of families.

But I worry about the lower income students at many of these private schools because there are no requirements for teachers to be licensed, no requirements for student learning, and no requirements to even take classroom attendance. In fact, almost 60% of the private schools that receive the most voucher money are not even accredited. Missed opportunity.

The truth is, not only do studies in other states show private school vouchers dig deep budget holes, they also show that students who use them don’t perform better. But in North Carolina, we just don’t know what kind of education these students are getting because these private schools using taxpayer money don’t have to tell the taxpayers how they are using it. Yet, the legislature is still taking billions of dollars that could go to public schools and sending it to private schools with absolutely no accountability. Missed opportunity.

If the legislature took those billions in voucher money and invested it in the public schools, we could keep and attract more great teachers and pay them what they deserve. We could help turn around our low-performing schools. We could provide more tutors for students who are struggling. We could provide more opportunities to students with disabilities because unlike private schools, public schools are required to admit anyone who shows up. Missed opportunity.

But friends, I am a prisoner of hope. My mother was a great public school teacher. I and all my children attended public schools. I know what they can do. My month rarely ends without visiting a couple of classrooms because I wanted North Carolina to know in all-caps and bold-face that education is the key to opportunity.

I’ve seen the passion in the eyes of teachers. I’ve seen the concerns on the brows of principals. I’ve seen the energy and dedication of parents, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians and volunteers. And I’ve seen the future of North Carolina in the faces of thousands of girls and boys, young men and women. And it gives me confidence.

We expanded Medicaid in North Carolina by pulling together nontraditional coalitions of people who were able to convince Republican legislators it was important to their success. We are beginning to do the same thing for public schools. Opportunity.

My vision as your governor has been a North Carolina where people are better educated and healthier, with more money in their pockets and the opportunity to have lives of purpose and abundance.

We’ve made great progress. But it’s forever a work in progress. We can’t let our children down. We can’t ruin their opportunity. I’ll leave office next month, but I’ll never stop working for them. And I know that you won’t either.