HIGHER ED WORKS

In 2023, Higher Ed Works moved fully into its expanded mission to embrace expanded support for public education from pre-school to graduate school. Though initially launched as a higher-education organization, the organization began doing business as Public Ed Works.Very few education advocacy organizations focus on the entire education continuum. But the organization accentuated its development efforts and saw both financial support and its audience grow as it expanded its mission.With substantial reach through its newsletter subscribers and social media followers, the organization focused messaging on lagging state support for public education, noting that North Carolina ranked 50th among the states in the percentage of its GDP it devoted to K-12 public education. Raises for teachers did not keep pace with inflation. The state ranked 46th in the country in starting teacher pay next-to-last in the Southeast which helped explain why North Carolina started the 2023-24 school year with 3,500 teacher vacancies, an increasing reliance on uncertified teachers, and shortages of bus drivers and early-childhood teachers.The organization conducted and advertised interviews with the Chair of the State Board of Education and former UNC basketball coach Roy Williams on the need to increase pay for teachers and invest more in public schools.The Organization focused on a dramatic expansion by the NC General Assembly in use of public funds to expand vouchers for students to attend private schools removing any limits on household income for students to qualify which only diverts funds from public schools. It also collaborated with Spectrum News and the NC Institute of Political Leadership on a series of televised debates on such issues as affirmative action in college admissions, the expansion of vouchers, spending on public education and teacher pay.The organization did not relinquish its attention to issues in higher education, however. It continued to focus on the politicization of public higher education, from the U.S. Supreme Courts ban on consideration of race in college admissions to micro-management by university boards to manipulation of the search process for university chancellors to the political factors that drove an accomplished chancellor away from UNC-Chapel Hill. The organization extensively covered the deliberations and recommendations of a bipartisan Commission on University Governance appointed by North Carolinas governor, which recommended expanded representation to better reflect the gender, race, political identity and geography on university governing boards. And it covered the installation of a new president for the NC Community College System.It also covered development of the state budget, which allocated additional dollars for nursing instructors to try to alleviate the states ongoing shortage of nurses that Higher Ed Works highlighted in a 2021 series on nursing education. The Organization covered developments in state courts in the 29-year-old Leandro litigation over state support for public education.The organization completed the year with 135,136 newsletter subscribers and 164,593 followers on social media for an audience of nearly 300,000. Through its weekly newsletter and social media posts, Higher Ed Works reached 3,351,958 people in 2023.All in all, 2023 was a year of expansion for Higher Ed Works in mission, in the issues on which it chooses to focus, in audience and in fundraising efforts to support the enterprise.