ABSTRACT
The Leandro v. the State of North Carolina adequacy lawsuit was filed in 1994 on behalf of several districts, among the poorest in North Carolina, all but one of which was relatively small (a dozen or fewer schools). Eventually a hearing took place for just one of these small districts, Hoke County, but later court decisions did not order increased statewide funding. After many other back-and-forth court actions, in 2022 the North Carolina Supreme Court ordered funding of two to three years of a remedial plan.
Analysis of school resource and achievement relationships was carried out for about 1.7 million observations for the years 2003 to 2005. After controlling for student background, only four of the 11 school resources assessed had statistically significant effects, and all of the statistically significant effects were less than or equal to 0.02. For example, the strongest effect was 0.02 for National Board-certified teachers. Effects were similar between all students and free lunch students assessed as a group.
