Last week, the NC Department of Public Instruction released “Highlights of the North Carolina Public School Budget 2014,” a collection of useful bits of information on state and federal education appropriations and expenditures.

I added the lines to the following figure from page 3 of Highlights 2014:

Screen Shot 2014-03-12 at 8.35.37 AM

The black line represents Democratic control of the NC General Assembly.  (I wanted to use blue, but it was difficult to see the line because of the blue bars.)  The red line represents Republican control of the legislature.

Debates about the causes and effects (and the sufficiency or insufficiency) of budget changes are legitimate.  Debates about whether the budget increased or decreased are not.