Oh, those heartless Republicans. They don’t 4-year-olds to get their government-run academic prekindergarten services in North Carolina.
That’s the message TIME sends with its coverage of the recent constitutional squabble over funding for the former “More At Four” program.
I guess it would be hard to expect Kayla Webley to get the big picture when she flubs key facts in the case:
The budget battle began in June when the general assembly slashed $32 million–a cut of 20%–from the state’s preschool program for at-risk 4-year-olds, 95% of whom qualify on the basis of income. Governor Beverly Perdue, a first-term Democrat, blasted the Republican-controlled legislature for “turning its back on our schools, our children, our long-standing investments in education and our future economic prospects.” On June 12, she issued the first budget veto in state history. But that was just Round 1.
A few days later, the legislature overrode her veto. Then the fight shifted to the courts as a handful of low-income school districts sued the state, claiming the budget cuts denied children their constitutional rights. Wake County Superior Court Judge Howard Manning agreed with the districts, ruling in July that the state cannot put up any barriers that prevent eligible at-risk children from enrolling in preschool. “This case is about the individual right of every child to have the equal opportunity to obtain a sound basic education,” Manning declared, adding that each 4-year-old who qualifies for North Carolina’s state program “is a defenseless, fragile child whose background of poverty or disability places the child at risk of subsequent academic failure.”
Well, not exactly. The budget battle, as you’ll recall, resulted from the fact that Perdue refused to accept a plan that accomplished almost everything she wanted in her own plan — except for the extension of a sales tax that was set to expire July 1.
Nor did the school districts sue after a bipartisan vote to override Perdue’s veto. Manning inserted himself into the debate as part of his oversight of a school funding fight that has lingered in the North Carolina court system for well over a decade. The “sound basic education” mantra has been part of the legal debate about North Carolina education funding for years.
More disturbing, though, than the shoddy reporting of the facts in North Carolina’s ongoing school funding court case is Webley’s shoddy reporting of the potential benefits of academic pre-kindergarten. As the John Locke Foundation has argued for years, long-term benefits from government-run pre-kindergarten programs are not as clear as the advocates claim.
