School forum can't put a price on performance.

• Position: ECONOMIC OUTLOOK - Finance of public school systems - Interview

All public school systems aren't created equal, nor are they endowed by their creator with enough money to provide a sound education for all students, according to the Public School Forum of North Carolina, a Raleigh-based think tank. The gap in per-student spending between the 10 richest counties and the 10 poorest has grown 62% since 1997. About 65% of funding for kindergarten through 12th grade comes from the state, about 25% from the counties through property taxes and the rest from the feds. John Dornan is the forum's executive director.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

BNC: Why is the gap growing?

Dornan: It really comes down to the difference between those counties that are adding jobs and growing their economies and those that are stagnant or slipping. It's gotten exaggerated recently because in our smaller counties, we've had so many plant closings, job losses and reductions in real-estate value.

Declining property values are shrinking county tax bases?

The property-tax rates in our poorer counties are considerably higher than the rates in our wealthier counties. The irony is that even when they tax themselves at a high rate, there simply isn't much to tax. A county like Wake can have a low tax rate, but it can generate a huge amount of money because it has so much real-estate wealth.

Why should a big-city businessman worry that rural counties spend so little on students?

Those children in poor counties in eastern and western North Carolina are tomorrow's work force. Many of those counties are losing population because people are moving to urban areas for jobs and opportunities. Will they have the basic skills they need, or are businesses going to have to invest in training them?

What evidence do we have that less money equals worse performance?

It isn't that cut-and-dried. The factors that appear to make a huge difference, though, include teacher-turnover rates. Can counties attract and keep people who are qualified to teach? There are a lot of studies that show if a student is unlucky enough to get a poorly qualified teacher two years in a row while they're in elementary school, they will be scarred for the rest of their life. And it's our poorest counties that are having the toughest time hiring and keeping qualified teachers.

Why?

We've done surveys on this with teachers. What is really huge are quality-of-life issues, availability of housing, shopping, colleges to get graduate degrees, social life on weekends. The counties that have...