Views

Cooper’s blunder still holds us back in schools

Details

Tuesday, 27 May 2025

Written by John Hood

Roy Cooper will reportedly make some headlines next month. I have no idea whether he’ll announce a run for the U.S. Senate in 2026. If he does, the former governor will present a formidable challenge to incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis. If he doesn’t run, it will be at least partly because Cooper believes he’ll win — and the prospect of spending the next six years in Washington may fill him with more dread than delight.
There’s one thing I know for certain, however. If Roy Cooper runs, Republicans will make sure voters remember the worst policy decision the Nash County Democrat ever made during his decades-long tenure in public service: keeping North Carolina’s public schools closed for far too long during the pandemic.
When the National Assessment of Educational Progress conducted its last pre-COVID battery of reading and math exams in 2019, North Carolina’s public schools performed comparatively well. Indeed, adjusted for student background, we ranked 7th in the nation in performance, behind only Massachusetts, Florida, New Jersey, Indiana, Mississippi, and Georgia.
Then disaster struck. COVID-19 was a deadly plague, killing some 1.2 million Americans — including tens of thousands of North Carolinians. I counted some of them as friends. Perhaps you did, too.
Some of the policy responses to it, including decisions made by then-Gov. Cooper, were prudent and reflected the best-available evidence at the time. But closing day care centers and educational institutions for more than a few weeks wasn’t one of them. It was already evident that the risks of serious illness and death were strongly correlated with age, and that young people weren’t a major driver of infection.
Lengthy school closures were ill-advised. Some of us argued as much at the time. Most policymakers in the United States — and in other countries — fully reopened their schools either in late spring or during the first few months of the ensuing 2020-21 academic year.
North Carolina didn’t. Even as late as May 2021, most of our school districts were operating in hybrid mode. In neighboring South Carolina and Georgia, most had returned fully to in-person instruction months earlier.
When NAEP administered its next exams, in 2022, North Carolina suffered a significant drop in performance. Other states with lengthy school closures did, too. Two years later, some bounced back a fair amount. Alas, North Carolina’s recovery from COVID-era learning loss looks more lackluster, especially in reading. The NAEP scores of our fourth-graders ranked 32nd in the nation in 2024, after adjusting for student background. South Carolina ranked 8th, Georgia 12th. Among eighth-graders, Georgia ranked 3rd, South Carolina 14th, and North Carolina 32nd.
Harvard University’s Education Recovery Scorecard project puts the matter starkly: “Average student achievement in North Carolina remains almost half of a grade level below 2019 levels in math and three quarters of a grade level below in reading.”
By comparison, South Carolina students are about a quarter of a grade level lower in math than they were in 2019, and a third of a grade level in reading. That’s still bad news. Unfortunately, our news is much worse.
Did our lengthy closures at least provide offsetting health benefits? Nah. Some COVID-era mandates do appear to have moved the needle on excess deaths but school (and business) closures aren’t among them.
The likes of South Carolina and Georgia did experience higher death rates than we did during the pandemic, but that’s largely explained by lower vaccination rates.
Yes, vaccination was strongly associated with reductions in serious illness and death. The evidence for vaccine efficacy is at least as solid as the evidence for COVID-era learning loss. I’ve read it. Don’t bother writing me unless you’ve done the same.
North Carolina educators and policymakers recognize the gravity of our learning losses and are working hard to remedy them. That’s the right approach. We can’t just accept learning losses as a fait accompli. But we also need to hold policymakers accountable for past decisions. On this issue, Cooper blew it.

Editor’s note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

Jordon rules: A UNC love story for the ages

Details

Tuesday, 20 May 2025

Written by Pitt Dickey

Right now you are probably asking yourself: “Self, what would Shakespeare think about our modern-day Romeo and Juliet story of Bill Belichick and his lady love Jordon Hudson?” Shakespeare might say.
“What is so rare as a Jordon in June?”
The biggest news this Spring was not the appointment of a new Pope, but the elevation of Bill Belichick’s girlfriend to be the face of the UNC football program. Friends, Tar Heels, Countrymen, lend me your ears while UNC raises the price of football tickets at Kenan Stadium.
Tar Heel football is providing bread and circuses instead of gridiron greatness on a scale reminiscent of the most decadent stages of the late, great Roman Empire. Today’s column is a Shakespearean salute to Jordon Hudson, who has proved that love conquers all.
In a mangled version of Marc Antony’s funeral oration at Caesar’s passing, I come to praise Jordon, not to bury her. She may have come in third at the Maine Miss USA pageant behind the winner, Miss Bangor, but she remains number one in the hearts of Tar Heel fans everywhere. She has single-handedly made the Tar Heel football program the number one sports story. How do we love her? Let us count the ways. Her rise to prominence began with her December/May romance with our very own Coach Belichick. Coach is 73, Jordon is 24. A mere 49-year difference in ages is no barrier to true love.
Coach Bill was engaged in a TV interview when some CBS smarty pants talking head had the nerve to ask Bill how he and Jordon met. Jordon, sitting off-screen, interrupted and sternly announced: “We’re not talking about that.”
Coach Bill clammed up per Jordon’s orders. As Marc Antony said: “The evil that men do lives after them/ The good is oft interred with their bones.” How Bill and Jordon met remains more secure classified information than a Pete Hegseth text about a military attack on Houthis and the Blowfish.
Cry-babies in the sports media and Saturday Night Live assumed the top-secret nature of how our love birds met meant something nefarious was going on. How wrong can they be? Their initial meeting was likely at an innocent church picnic where Bill was grilling burgers and Jordon was teaching the children cheers and baton twirling. It is beyond churlish to presume otherwise. As Mr. Antony said: “O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts/ And men have lost their reason.” The sports world’s repugnant fascination with the story of Jordon and Bill defies all reason.
The next tiny little event that was blown way out of proportion was the fake news report on ESPN that our heroine Jordon had been barred from entry onto the Carolina football stadium and related gridiron environs. To those who spread this scurrilous rumor, I say: “Fie on you, thou cream-faced loon. A pox on your throat. Degenerate and base art thou. There is no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune. You beetle-headed flap-ear’d knave,” stop slandering our beloved Jordon. We need her to lead the Heels to gridiron glory.
Shortly after the fake news that she had been banned from UNC’s football facilities, the University put out an official statement refuting Jordon’s alleged banishment, saying: “While Jordon is not an employee of the University or Carolina Athletics, she is welcome to the Carolina Football facilities. Jordon will continue to manage all activities related to Coach Belichick’s personal brand outside of his responsibilities for Carolina Football and the University.” If UNC says it, I believe it. And that settles it. Jordon Rules! Long may she reign. Fake Media take back your lies: “Away you starveling, you elf skin, you dried neats-tongue, bull’s pizzle, You Stock fish!”
You scurvy fellow travelers of the lying media. “Thou tongues outvenom all the worms of the Nile.” Your lies about Jordon are of the “rankest compound of villainous smell that ever-offended nostrils.”
Jordon is here to stay in command at UNC. Unless, of course, she enters the transfer portal and takes up with the Oracle of Omaha, the recently retired Warren Buffett. A 94-year-old multi-billionaire with an old heart might tempt any young lady with a desire for some real NIL money. Carolina football fans: Fasten your seat belts, it’s gonna be a bumpy night. Don’t put your faith in stewed prunes. Jordon will be with us unless she gets a better offer. As Andy Griffith would say: “What is was, was football.”

(Illustration by Pitt Dickey)

Black fatigue: a call for accountability, not accusation

Details

Tuesday, 20 May 2025

Written by J. Antoine Miner, Sr.

In today’s America, the term Black fatigue has evolved far beyond its original context. Initially coined to describe the emotional weariness experienced by Black Americans in the face of systemic racism, the term has taken on a new and controversial dimension. Increasingly, Black fatigue is being used to describe a growing frustration among both white conservatives and conservative Black Americans—though for very different reasons.
White Americans, especially those with traditional values or conservative viewpoints, are voicing exhaustion from being labeled racist or bigoted for expressing dissent from liberal talking points. Whether it's opposition to critical race theory in schools, concerns over crime, or support for law enforcement, their views are often instantly dismissed as rooted in hate. They are fatigued not by race itself, but by the constant accusation of racism for daring to think differently.
But perhaps more notably—and more painfully—conservative Black Americans are experiencing their own version of Black fatigue. And theirs is not directed outward. It is inward.
Many conservative and traditional Black voices are tired of the narrative that portrays Black America as perpetually oppressed, helpless, and devoid of agency. They’re weary of the cultural silence when it comes to addressing the internal issues plaguing our communities—issues like absentee fathers, rising drug use, spiraling youth violence, and the devastating toll of Black-on-Black crime.
It is exhausting to watch videos of young Black teens ransacking stores or engaging in brutal fights, only to have the blame redirected at vague notions of systemic injustice without ever confronting the destructive choices being made. Black fatigue, for these individuals, stems from watching the same cycle repeat itself while being told that any effort to promote accountability or traditional values is “anti-Black” or “respectability politics.”
I’m tired of watching our culture get hijacked by ignorance. We blame the system, but we’re glorifying thug life in our music, disrespecting education, and shaming anyone who tries to rise above it.
There’s a difference between acknowledging history and being held hostage by it. Many conservative Black Americans understand that racism exists, but they also believe it cannot be the scapegoat for every social ill. At some point, there must be room for tough love—where we confront our own failings with the same intensity we direct toward systemic critique.
This isn’t about shaming the Black community—it’s about loving it enough to demand more. More accountability. More responsibility. More leadership.
As Fayetteville continues to face its own challenges with youth crime, educational disparities, and economic instability, the conversation around Black fatigue must include more than blame. It must include solutions. That starts with honesty—about where we are, how we got here, and what we must do differently.
Black fatigue isn’t just real. It’s a warning. One that says if we don’t start changing the narrative from victimhood to victory, from reaction to responsibility, we will continue to wear ourselves—and our community—into the ground.

North Carolinians still make lots of stuff

Details

Tuesday, 20 May 2025

Written by John Hood

You’ve heard it as often as I have: “we don’t make things here anymore.” It reflects the widespread belief that domestic manufacturing and other goods-producing industries have cratered since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the mid-1990s and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001.
It’s a myth. The output of American manufacturing is higher than ever, even after adjusting for inflation. In our state, manufacturing output in dollar terms is higher today than it was in the 1990s, though it remains a bit lower than it was before the Great Recession of 2007-09.
Why is the myth so prevalent? Because it’s readily apparent that some manufacturers have shrunk, or disappeared entirely, and that has sometimes been the result of competition from abroad. What’s not so readily apparent is that other manufacturers have grown or been birthed during the same period.
Moreover, there really has been a decline since the 1990s in manufacturing employment. In 1997, some 800,000 North Carolinians held manufacturing jobs. Today, that number is about 460,000. The primary story here isn’t foreign competition driving manufacturers out of business. It’s the use of automation and other technology to make our manufacturing more efficient — producing more goods per hour of labor.
We’ve been through this before with another goods-producing industry: agriculture. When my great-grandparents were born, they and most other North Carolinians were agricultural laborers, either running family farms or working for other enterprises that grew, harvested, or processed food and fiber. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as new machinery, seeds, fertilizers, and agriculture techniques proliferated, farmers came to produce vastly more output for each unit of input. Carolinians then migrated from farm labor to manufacturing, construction, retail, and other professions.
Last year, North Carolina’s agriculture and forestry sectors produced $7.4 billion in economic output. As far as I can determine, that’s higher than ever before. Of course, our state is much more populous and developed than it was a century ago. Agriculture makes up a smaller share of our gross domestic product — and a much smaller share of employment — not because it has atrophied but simply because other sectors and occupations have grown faster.
Manufacturing exhibits the same pattern. The sector produced $108 billion worth of goods in North Carolina last year. That’s 24% higher than in 1997, adjusted for inflation.
Now, the composition of the sector certainly changed. The dollar value of non-durable manufacturing is lower. But durable-goods manufacturing has more than made up the difference. In dollar value, North Carolinians produce far more machinery ($8.6 billion worth), computers and electronics ($7.4 billion), fabricated metal products ($5.2 billion), vehicles and auto parts ($3.4 billion), and other transportation equipment ($4.6 billion) than we do textiles and apparel ($2.6 billion).
North Carolina firms produced $2.4 billion worth of furniture and wood products in 2023. That’s down 34% since 1997. In the same year, 2023, North Carolina firms produced $28.9 billion worth of chemicals, plastics, and rubber products. These are vastly larger industries in our state, and have been either holding their own or growing over time.
More broadly, goods-producing sectors in North Carolina — agriculture, manufacturing, resource extraction, and construction — had a total output last year of $159 billion. That’s up 23% in real terms since 1997. Why might one think otherwise? Because the output of private services rose still faster, more than doubling to $548 billion (government services comprise the rest of GDP).
As our employment base shifted toward services, did we get poorer? Not at all. Personal income averaged $64,855 per North Carolinian in 2024, up 48% in inflation-adjusted terms since 1997.
I’m not saying everything is hunky-dory. Federal, state, and local regulations make it costlier than necessary to farm, manufacture, mine, and build. And too many North Carolinians lack the skills required to perform these tasks. That’s a telling fact, though: in goods-producing industries, our current challenge isn’t a labor surplus. It’s a labor shortage.

Editor’s note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).