2 studies could put NC students at center of public education

With November approaching, Raleigh is shifting into campaign mode. All 170 seats in the General Assembly are on the ballot, most legislative business has wound down, and lawmakers have finally enacted a new state budget after more than 1,000 days without one.

At 634 pages, the new budget will not attract many casual readers. But tucked among its appropriations and statutory changes are two studies that could matter long after the campaign signs come down. One asks how North Carolina should finance public education. The other asks whether families should have more freedom to choose among the public schools their taxes support.

The North Carolina Collaboratory, a state-funded research organization based at UNC-Chapel Hill, will report on intra-district open enrollment in April 2027 and on a three-year transition to weighted student funding in July. By next summer, legislators could have practical proposals before them on both subjects.

Taken together, the studies ask whether North Carolina can organize public education more transparently around students rather than funding categories and attendance lines.

North Carolina distributes public school funding through dozens of allotments for dollars, positions, programs, and student needs. The system has become difficult even for school officials to navigate and nearly impossible for parents or taxpayers to follow.

Today, support for one child may be scattered across several allotments. A weighted formula would make the calculation easier to see: a base amount for every student, with additional dollars when a disability, limited English proficiency, or economic disadvantage makes education more costly.

The John Locke Foundation’s 2024 report, “Funding Our Future,” followed the money through North Carolina’s roughly 50 school allotments and showed how difficult it is to tell what support reaches an individual student. Tennessee, California, and Indiana had faced similar problems before rewriting their formulas.

How much extra funding should follow a student with a disability? Should poverty and limited English proficiency carry the same weight? What happens to a district that loses money under the new formula? Those decisions will produce winners, losers, and plenty of pressure to slow the process down. A careful phase-in makes sense. An endless transition does not.

The Collaboratory will have to confront decisions lawmakers have kicked down the road for too long. Should teacher positions be converted to dollars? Which special allotments still serve a purpose? How much freedom should local leaders have once the money reaches a district? Its plan must also show how to change the system without throwing district budgets into disarray.

The open-enrollment study addresses a different question, though one parents understand immediately: Why should a child’s home address have so much power over which public school that child may attend?

The study is limited to choices within a student’s district. It does not involve private schools. It asks whether parents should have more freedom to choose among the public schools their district already operates.

Some North Carolina districts already provide that freedom. Union and Granville counties have relatively strong programs. Elsewhere, parents may have to demonstrate an extraordinary hardship before administrators will even consider a transfer.

That gets the presumption backward.

When a public school has room, parents should not have to plead for access as though requesting a personal favor. The district should have to identify a legitimate reason for saying no.

Union County gives us a picture of what this could look like. Each year, the school board identifies schools with room to spare. For 2026–27, 19 schools made the list. Families apply during a set window, parents provide transportation, and no applicant gets a special advantage over another. It is not a perfect system, but it is easy to understand.

That is where the Collaboratory should start. Districts should not be able to call a school “full” without showing their work, and a family turned away should get more than a vague explanation.

The John Locke Foundation’s May 2026 report, “Understanding Open Enrollment,” looks at how other states handle those disputes and at the North Carolina districts already trying something similar. The politics are not especially mysterious. In a January 2026 Carolina Journal poll, nearly eight in 10 likely voters supported within-district open enrollment. That support held across party lines and across rural, suburban, and urban communities.

Parents do not need a white paper to understand why. Children are not interchangeable, and schools from Murphy to Manteo are not either. One child may thrive in a particular academic program. Another may simply do better in a different setting. A home address should not settle that question when another public school has an open seat.

That is also why the funding study and the open-enrollment study belong together. Public education exists to serve students.

That does not mean every recommendation will be wise. Reports are not legislation, and legislation is not implementation. The General Assembly will still need to examine the findings, hear from parents and educators, and guard against unintended consequences.

But the studies ask two questions North Carolina can no longer avoid: Does school funding reach students in a way anyone can readily understand? And should a family be denied an available seat in a public school simply because it lives on the wrong side of an attendance line?

By next summer, lawmakers may have practical answers and a path toward a public education system built more deliberately around students and families.

“2 studies could put NC students at center of public education” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.