A Futile Feat? Funding Public K-12 Education in North Carolina

Abstract

North Carolina’s K-12 public education system suffers from inadequate funding, which diminishes the quality of education provided to students. What explains this? Although there are many potential ways to increase revenue for public K-12 education, the most substantive way is to raise taxes. However, I find that since Republicans believe that low taxes are the key to economic growth, they have made it challenging to raise taxes and difficult to justify any increases that are proposed. As a result, and since Republicans currently control the General Assembly, public K-12 education in North Carolina continues to be inadequately funded.