Capital Update: Standards, Deregulation Highlight N.C. Proposal

The North Carolina board of education has issued a broad school-reform plan, calling for decentralization of the state's education bureaucracy and high standards for students.

The plan, released this month, emphasizes high achievement standards and a focus on such basics as reading, writing, and mathematics. It also calls for a major decentralization and deregulation effort. The board recommended that the state reduce the education department by more than a third, from 788 to 485 employees. It estimated that such cuts would save about $20.9 million a year.

The state board also proposed a new accountability plan, which would set annual improvement goals for each of the state's nearly 2,000 schools. Schools that met the goals could receive teacher bonuses and greater flexibility in decisionmaking, while those that did not could be subject to sanctions...