She’s been homeschooling her children for over a decade, participated in the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the , and has used choice words like “indoctrination centers” to describe public schools. And then there’s the 2020 tweet she said the media won’t let her forget — the one in which she called for a of former President Barack Obama. 

In an interview with ����Ӱ��, Morrow, who has about her past tweets, downplayed the comments. “Did I say things in jest? Absolutely,” she said. The former nurse unexpectedly ousted Republican incumbent Catherine Truitt in the primary and now faces Maurice “Mo” Green, a former district superintendent, in the general election. She brushes off her as just “a political thing.” 

“That’s between adults,” she said. “That’s not what I think should be happening in our classrooms.”

Morrow isn’t the only Jan. 6 participant vying for office this November. for a , and an of the rally is running for the Texas House. But if elected, Morrow would become the only protester responsible for more than 2,700 schools and a $13 billion education budget.

She counts her nine years teaching science and Spanish for a homeschool co-op as her primary qualification for the job and said that after six years talking to parents and educators, she has a “clear understanding” of what voters are looking for in a state schools chief, starting with a strong focus on academics and character development. Green, meanwhile, is trumpeting his experience leading an education agency and advocating for increased education funding at a time when Republican lawmakers are . 

In interviews, Morrow espouses policies — like a scientific approach to and in math — that could bridge the partisan divide in a state with a Democratic governor and Republican-controlled House and Senate. But her past actions and occasionally extreme language are alienating would-be allies.

“I’m fearful of the rhetoric,” said Marcus Brandon, who leads CarolinaCAN, part of a network of policy and advocacy groups that support school choice. He pushed for expansion of the state’s voucher program, and said while Morrow is “good for my issue on paper,” he thinks Green is more qualified. A former lawyer, Green led the Guilford County Schools, which includes Greensboro, for seven years.

“We need a strong public school system,” Brandon said. “Seventy-five percent of our kids are going to go there.” 

Following her surprise victory in the March primary, Morrow’s campaign attracted a from North Carolina’s business community. But she lags behind Green in fundraising. At the Green had over $578,000 on hand to Morrow’s $50,600. 

Whoever wins faces a system with critical challenges, like record-setting and flat funding. According to the Education Law Center’s most recent , North Carolina ranks 48th in per-student funding, almost $5,000 below the national average of $16,131. Morrow argues there’s already plenty of money for education and districts just need to “triage.” 

“We need someone who can lead us in a way that prioritizes students,” said Lauren Fox, senior director of policy and research at the Public School Forum of North Carolina, a think tank that supports public schools. She hopes the next superintendent will continue Truitt’s practice of appointing a at a time when teachers currently feel “ and that their voices aren’t being heard.” 

Green agrees and often the public that Morrow, during some of her Facebook live posts early in the pandemic, used words like “cesspool of evil and lies” to describe public schools. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor, has made similar disparaging remarks, calling teachers “wicked people” in last year. 

“Our educators are being disrespected,” Green told ����Ӱ��. The state ranks 42nd in starting teacher pay, according to the latest National Education Association . “It’s especially challenging to bring folks into this really important profession when you’re not paying them well enough.” 

During his tenure, from 2008 to 2015, Guilford saw graduation rates climb nearly 10 percentage points to over 89% and rising scores on college entrance exam. 

Recruited to run by outgoing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, Green said he’s better positioned to press for state spending increases while helping districts adjust to tighter budgets as federal relief funds dry up. He took over the Guilford district at the start of the Great Recession and said one of his first tasks was to return money to the state so officials could balance the budget.

After leaving Guilford, Green led the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a philanthropy that funds of education, social and environmental causes. In Guilford, he supported charter schools and encouraged choice within the district. But he said, “We can’t have great choices in our public schools when you don’t provide even close to adequate resources for them.”

His point in a state where a group of poor districts sued in 1994 to get enough funding to provide students with a basic education. The foundation he led funded efforts to determine how much the state should provide for programs like pre-K and teacher preparation. The conservative state Supreme Court, however, is now deciding whether to overturn a 2022 opinion directing North Carolina to spend $800 million to improve education in the poorest parts of the state.

Green called the foundation “an organization that certainly tries to lift up marginalized communities.” 

But Morrow has seized on Green’s ties to the association to label him and extremist. She points to the organization’s financing of who push for reducing the presence of school resource officers to curb the school-to-prison pipeline.

She said she’s watching out for teachers by making student discipline the centerpiece of her platform. She cited showing almost 1,500 assaults by students on public school employees during the 2022-23 school year and attended a recent in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to address school safety. 

Morrow thinks she’s been by educators in the public system and insists she only decided to homeschool when her oldest daughter, who had learning disabilities, wasn’t making progress. 

“She was having math tutoring every day, and she still wasn’t learning math facts,” she said. 

She eventually homeschooled her other four children, but stressed that she doesn’t think all public schools are bad. As an example, she pointed to her local Wake County district’s . 

“This whole idea that because your children are not in public school, that means you hate public school — nothing could be further from the truth,” she said.

Morrow described any past online vitriol as “rhetorical hyperbole” that wasn’t “bothering anybody” until the media focused on it.

But at a June conservative gathering called America Day, south of Greensboro, some of had a familiar ring. 

“The greatest threat to the constitutional Republic that we call home is the indoctrination happening in our public school system today,” she said. In other interviews, she has voiced to discussions of race and gender in the classroom.

Morrow said she holds a monthly Zoom meeting with teachers, but has twice to share the stage with her Democratic opponent. 

“She is running for office by running against the current system,” said Christopher Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University. If Green wants to draw the spotlight away from her, Cooper said he must “raise the salience” of the office.

“The superintendent of public instruction is not, in normal circumstances, an office that voters know a lot about,” he said. And most statewide races “do not draw attention outside of the borders of North Carolina,” making this chief’s race unique. 

But ultimately, the outcome in a purple state will likely rest not on either candidate’s platform, he said, but on whether Robinson, the GOP candidate for governor, and former President Donald Trump prevail on election night.

“If Morrow does win,” he said, “it will likely be on the backs of a larger number of Republican wins in North Carolina.”

The State Board of Education discussed the implications of several items from the at its meeting earlier this month, including , known as the “Parents’ Bill of Rights.”

SL 2023-106 became law on Aug. 16, after the General Assembly overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the bill. At the time, state Superintendent Catherine Truitt said school districts needed more time to meet requirements of the new law, asking lawmakers to bump the effective date from Sept. 15 to Jan. 1.

The new budget, passed on Sept. 22, granted that extension for much of the law. The budget also clarified that parents will not need to be notified or provide consent when school personnel act in a medical emergency.

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“From the beginning, I’ve supported the Parents’ Bill of Rights law, and I want it to be implemented successfully and enacted fully,” Truitt previously . “I am very pleased to see that the General Assembly addressed provisions in the conference budget to ensure a smoother process for parents to be fully protected under the Parents’ Bill of Rights.”

The law seeks to “enumerate the rights of parents to direct the upbringing, education, health care, and mental health of their minor children.”

While most Republicans and Democrats agree that the law outlines rights parents already have, Republican bill sponsors said the law safeguards the integral role of parents in their children’s lives. Opponents, including many educators, have said the law will damage the relationship between educators and students, while also threatening the safety of LGBTQ+ students.

The law bans curriculum on gender identity, sexual activity, or sexuality in kindergarten through fourth grade. It also requires schools to notify a parent about their child’s physical and mental health, including any school health care services they use, changes to their well-being, or requests to change a student’s pronouns.

The law also allows parents to review all curriculum and establishes remedies and timelines for parental concerns. Under that provision, the law mandates that school governing bodies adopt procedures for parents to notify principals regarding concerns about curriculum. A process to resolve concerns should take place within seven days of the date of notification by the parent.

After 30 days, “the public school unit shall provide a statement of the reasons for not resolving the concern.” At that point, parents can also request a “parental concerning hearing” with the State Board of Education.

Board leaders about the provision, saying the hearings “will likely be a frustrating exercise in futility for all involved” and a “significant expenditure of resources.”

On Thursday, the Board discussed a regarding such hearings.

Under the policy, parents can only request a hearing with the Board under limited circumstances. One set of circumstances include the failure of a child’s school to adopt and implement policies to notify parents about the following items:

• Health care services at the child’s school and how parents can provide consent for services.
• The procedures available to parents to remedy concerns.
• A copy of student well-being questionnaires or health screening forms for students in K-3, and how parents can consent to the form.
• Changes in services or monitoring related to “their child’s mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being and the school’s ability to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for that child.”
• Changes in the name or pronoun used for a student “in school records or by school personnel.”

Parents can also also seeks hearings with the Board about the existence of the following procedures or practices at their child’s school:

• Procedures that “do not include a requirement that school personnel either encourage a child to discuss issues related to the child’s well-being with his or her parents or facilitate a discussion of the issues with the child’s parents,” or that encourage a child “to withhold information from that child’s parents about his or her mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being.”
• Procedures that prohibit parents from accessing their children’s school education and health records, except in investigations of abuse.
• Procedures that “result in instruction on gender identity, sexual activity, or sexuality” in K-4.

Notably, that list does not include book challenges, which must be handled at the local level.

Parents can request a hearing about the above items after notifying the principal of their child’s school, if the school has not resolved the concerns within 30 days.

Under the new policy, the Board will appoint a hearing officer for each case who is a member of the North Carolina State Bar and has experience in education and administrative law in the last five years. The public school must pay for the costs of that hearing officer, who would then hold a hearing and submit a recommended decision to the Board within 30 days after their appointment.

“At the next regularly scheduled State Board meeting, held more than seven days after receipt of the recommended decision, the State Board shall vote to either approve, reject, or amend the hearing officer’s recommended decision,” the draft policy says.

Graduation requirements

The new budget also requires the State Board of Education to create a three-year graduation track for high school students by Nov. 1. That track will consist of 22 credits, and must receive parental consent.

The budget currently states that “local boards of education shall offer a sequence of courses in accordance” with that minimum requirement. Many schools already allow early graduation pathways for some students, but most schools typically require 28 credits for graduation.

Many education leaders worried the budget’s provision would prevent them from requiring more than 22 credits for any students.

“That of course, caused a lot of outcry from our school districts,” said Sneha Shah-Coltrane, director of advanced learning and gifted education at the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). “As a result, we are very grateful that we are working with the General Assembly on some technical corrections, to be able to move forward with a reasonable, different approach.”

In anticipation of such technical corrections, the Board discussed . That policy will come to the Board for approval next month, pending the corrections.

The proposed amendment, “Authority for Local School Boards to Exceed Minimum Graduation Requirements,” outlines a process for students who wish to graduate after three years to “request that local board waive the additional local requirements.”

The student must complete and sign a waiver from the local board. That waiver must also be signed by the student’s parent or legal guardian, unless the student is 18 years or older, or has been emancipated. An administrator from the student’s high school must also then meet with the student and their parent “to discuss the implications of graduating in three years.”

Students who successfully opt to graduate early — and who also seek a degree, diploma, or certificate at an eligible postsecondary institution — will be eligible for “early graduate scholarships” based on financial need. Read more starting on 

“This is just another step toward recognizing that the nature of school and work is changing before our very eyes,” Truitt said. “I think it is a very small percentage of students for who it is right to stop at 22 (credits) — this may continue to grow as more and more options become available to students — but what I really like is that this policy requires parent buy-in for this happen.”

Teacher pay

Truitt also spoke about the budget’s raises for school employees — which included a 7% raise over two year for most school employees, and a 3.6-10.8% raise for teachers.

Earlier this long session, Truitt and the Board asked lawmakers for at least a 10% raise for employees.

“As a former educator, I’ve been vocal that North Carolina’s teachers deserve a raise, and I’m disappointed that we did not see the double digit pay increase for educators that we hoped for in this Conference budget,” she said in . “Salaries in other professions have kept pace with inflation, however that is not the case with education.”

Truitt highlighted her disappointment with the raises again during her report on Thursday. Board members also spoke about disappointment in the budget’s provisions for teacher raises.

Board Chair Alan Duncan said he hopes lawmakers will readdress teacher pay in the short session.

“I cannot help but express some disappointment that there was not a better response to the request,” he said. “And I’m sorry for the educators that there was not.”

You can view the updated salary schedules for 2023-24 . You can also read about the budget’s supplements outlined for educators at

Truitt said DPI’s requests for the short session will include funding for professional development for middle school teachers, with a focus on improving math proficiency.

Truitt also highlighted the budget’s provision of nearly $13 million into the Advanced Teaching Roles (ATR) initiative — the first directed state funding for the program.

Under that program, adult leadership teachers in participating districts will receive a $10,000 supplement. Classroom excellence teachers will receive a $3,000 supplement.

The Board heard a presentation on the Friday Institute’s The Board opted to send a partial version of the report, due Oct. 15, to the General Assembly, and will submit the full report in November after it is approved with additional information requested by Board members.

Truitt also highlighted the following items from the budget during her report:

Reports on students with disabilities and low-performing schools

The Board heard several important reports on Wednesday regarding student success.

First, the Board discussed a .

Per the report, a federal view found several things that “need assistance” within the state’s Exceptional Children (EC) department. The priority areas identified in the report include:

• Participation and performance on statewide assessments
• Suspension and expulsion
• Preschool outcomes
• Child Find/Early Childhood Transition
• Secondary Transition/Post-School Outcomes

The Board also received from the Council on Educational Services for Exceptional Children, which advises the State Board of Education “on unmet needs of children with special needs and the development and implementation of policies related to the coordination of services for students with disabilities.”

The council made the following recommendations in its 2022-23 report:

• “Hear from the ground.” Invite organizations which provide support to families navigating the education system to speak about best practices and challenges at least once a year.
• Do a survey of other organizations that also serve families with disabilities along with mental health concerns.
• Incorporate “A New Wave of Evidence,” showing that connections between school, family, and community lead to student success.

The Board also discussed its annual report to lawmakers

State law defines low-performing schools as those that receive a school performance grade of a D or F and a school growth score of “met expected growth” or “not met expected growth.” A low-performing school district is defined as a district in which the majority of the schools are low-performing.

Here is some data from that report.

On Thursday, the Board also approved two policies related to low-performing schools.

First, the Board approved a policy allowing the Board “to assign an assistance team to any school identified as low-performing or to any other school that requests an assistance team and that the State Board determines would benefit from an assistance team.”

Second, the Board approved a new policy that allows them to appoint an interim district superintendent when more than half the schools in that district are designated as low-performing and the assistance team assigned to a school “recommends the superintendent has failed to cooperate with the assistance team or has otherwise hindered that school’s ability to improve.”

Finally, the Board also saw a preview of its annual report to the General Assembly The Board will vote on that report next month.

Updates to parental leave policy

The State Board of Education gave final approval to its temporary , as mandated by . That section requires a paid parental leave policy for all state agency, public school, UNC, and community college employees.

Originally, the policy — based on state law — said that employees must have been employed by the public school unit without a break in service “for at least 1,040 hours within the previous 12-month period” to be eligible for paid parental leave.

In other words, employees who moved school districts would not have been eligible for the benefits, even if they had worked in North Carolina public schools for 10 years.

Following pushback, lawmakers made technical corrections to the law. The Board’s new policy will now cover employees who recently switched districts, as long as they have an aggregate 1,040 hours without a break of service at a North Carolina school or state agency.

The policy provides up to eight weeks of paid parental leave after giving birth to a child on or after July 1, 2023, or up to four weeks after any other qualifying event, like adoption or legal guardianship.

The revisions to the rule will be effective on Nov. 7.

Other things to know

• The Board approved a report to the General Assembly on the The goal for 2022–23 was set at 89.5%. The statewide rate, 86.5%, did not meet this year’s target, though 31 individual school districts did.
• The Charter Schools Review Board (CSRB) presented in light of new state laws regarding charter schools in the budget. There are currently 15 applications for 2023.
• The Board also approved a new policy, . That policy is in response to a new state law that allows “an applicant for a charter school, a charter school, or the State Superintendent of Public Instruction (to) appeal to the State Board of Education from a final decision by the Charter Schools Review Board on whether to grant, renew, revoke, or amend a charter.”
• Thursday marked the last Board meeting for Dr. Maria Pitre-Martin, the director of Board operations and policy.
• The Board offered initial approval two additional community colleges to offer the Elementary Education Residency Licensure Certificate Program: Pitt Community College and Robeson Community College. Those colleges join many other community colleges to receive initial authorization for the program

The full State Board of Education meets next Oct. 31 through Nov. 2 at East Carolina University in Greenville for its planning and work session.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

During the meeting, Truitt promoted her initiative, , named after the Latin word for the North Star.

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“My North Star is that every child in North Carolina must have a highly effective and excellent teacher in every classroom,” Truitt said.

‘We need to redefine school accountability’

The has four “satellites”: literacy, student support, teachers, and accountability. Truitt concentrated most of her remarks Tuesday on the latter, arguing that the state’s current measures of student success are too weighted toward “high stakes, one-and-done, end-of-grade tests,” the outcomes of which arrive too late for a teacher to do anything about them.

“It’s summer when the teacher gets the result,” she said.

Truitt said that these end-of-grade tests are not good tests during a question-and-answer session. About the ACT, the college entrance exam every North Carolina public school student is required to take by law, she said, “As someone who did not do a good job on the ACT, it is not a good predictor of success.”

Schools in North Carolina are graded on an A-F grading system. To determine the school grade, the state uses a formula that emphasizes student performance on end-of-year testing. The formula is 80% academic achievement and 20% academic growth.

Truitt wants new metrics for accountability that include testing, parent satisfaction and their access to teachers and school leadership, the rate of chronic absenteeism, and the presence or absence of various afterschool programs.

“We need to redefine school accountability and rethink what student testing looks like,” she told the committee.

Truitt emphasized the role of public education in preparing students to enter the workforce, saying that education is needed for economic mobility and a pathway to the middle class.

But Truitt also suggested the definition of education needed to be expanded beyond that developed by “educators at Harvard” more than a century ago. Too many North Carolina students, she said, lack a “credential of marketplace value — in other words, a credential they can get a job with.” Under a third of graduating high school seniors in the state have obtained such a credential by the age of 24, she said.

“If we continue to say we’re so proud of our 87% of high school graduation rate,” she said, “and yet, only 31% of students are obtaining a credential of marketplace value, then that diploma does not have the integrity that we want it to have.”

Truitt also stressed that graduates too often lack “durable skills” that would help them in a career.

“I’ve been hearing for years that employers are frustrated because employees can’t count change,” she said. “They don’t show up for work on time. They can’t pass a drug test. All kinds of challenges.”

High schools, Truitt believes, should focus on providing employer-sought credentials, especially in computer science, and not just preparing students for a four-year residential college experience.

“We need to make sure that our students are introduced to the notion of a K-12 career path early on,” she said. “The ‘college for all’ cry from the 90’s and the 2000’s needs to become ‘careers for all.’”

See Truitt’s presentation here.

Lawmakers react

The remark didn’t sit well with D-Mecklenburg, the only lawmaker on the committee with professional education experience.

“As a college counselor, that’s very concerning when it comes from the Superintendent of Public Instruction,” Hunt said in an interview after the committee. “To say that starting at kindergarten we should take the idea of the college out of the minds of certain children is something that used to happen many, many years ago. We need to make sure there is equity and opportunity for everyone, and then if that person or family decides on a career path, that’s fine. But language really matters, and so does the person saying it.”

At the meeting, Hunt also told Truitt teachers in her district were struggling with a new adopted last year.

“Teachers are having a really hard time in Mecklenburg County,” Hunt said.

Other lawmakers on the panel who spoke up Tuesday were positive, offering their own anecdotes that reinforced Truitt’s themes.

R-Union, bemoaned the reality voiced by Truitt that many high school students endeavor to play a “GPA-game” designed to boost college applications. He echoed her assertion that schools should make students employable.

“If we’re handing a child a diploma and they don’t have the skills to get a job,” he said, “we’re failing that child.”

, R-Randolph, said she worried not about percentages but about actual students.

“I’m concerned that many of them can’t write their names,” she said. “I know we’ve got to get back to basics: reading, writing, and arithmetic. There were so many good things that worked great years ago and would work great right now.”

Later, Hurley pressed the superintendent to make sure students were learning to write in cursive, a requirement .

, R-Gaston, a chair of the committee, said that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson will present before the committee next week.

See the video of Superintendent Truitt speaking before the committee below. Below that, listen to audio from the committee.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.