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Maurice “Mo” Green had a pretty good idea of the task ahead of him when he decided last year to run as a Democrat for state superintendent of public instruction.
He would talk about his experience leading the public schools in Guilford County, the third largest system in North Carolina, and the need to stem the loss of experienced teachers, help schools meet the needs of each student, and ensure that character is taught along with math, English and history.
He would presumably square off against the Republican incumbent, Catherine Truitt, a former public school English teacher and policy adviser to former Gov. Pat McCrory. While Green and Truitt have different ideas about how to improve schools, they both value the role that public schools serve for students, communities, and the state.
Then Truitt lost in the Republican primary in March. And the challenge facing Green changed dramatically.
Truitt lost to insurgent candidate Michele Morrow, who has described public schools as “socialist indoctrination centers” and homeschools her children. She has called for the public executions of Democratic political figures such as Gov. Roy Cooper and former President Barack Obama, and attended the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
To Green, that meant he could no longer just talk about improving public schools in North Carolina. He felt the need to talk about saving public schools in North Carolina. “I do believe that the very soul of public education is on the ballot,” Green said in an interview. “This is a moment for those like myself to actually rise to the occasion and be sure that we lift up public education.”
It could use a lift. Polls conducted nationally and in North Carolina show a decline in the public’s trust in public schools. The Republican majority in the General Assembly has increased the public money spent for charter schools and dramatically expanded a voucher program that makes it easier for parents to enroll their children in private schools.
Experienced teachers are fleeing the classroom as the state ranks 45th of 50 in per-student spending on public education (a different survey ranks North Carolina 36th). In 1970, more than half (52 percent) of the state’s General Fund went to pay for public schools; by 2022, that figure had dropped to less than 41 percent.
“We are woefully underfunding our public schools,” said Green, who pointed out that North Carolina also lags behind bordering states Virginia and South Carolina in per-student spending.
Public schools are on the defensive. Cooper has been an advocate, but he’s outnumbered by Republican legislators pushing alternatives to traditional K–12 education. For Green and other advocates for traditional public schools, Morrow’s candidacy feels like a turning point—or perhaps a breaking point—that could determine the future of public education in North Carolina.
Higher Graduation Rates
After attending a private school in Queens, New York, as a young child, Green moved to Macon, Georgia with his family and attended public schools. His parents—particularly his mother—prized the importance of education and insisted that their children treat teachers with respect.
Green remembers his mother insisting that he redo some of his math homework because it wasn’t neat enough. She once banned him from his baseball team after he brought home a report card that didn’t meet her expectations. “She was very diligent” about her children’s education, he said.
Green graduated from Duke University with a degree in political science and economics in 1988, and from Duke’s law school in 1991.
“I do believe that the very soul of public education is on the ballot.”
Mo Green, Democratic candidate for superintendent of public instruction
While his mother would eventually become a special-needs teacher, Green worked on the administrative side of public schools. It is not difficult to imagine him meeting with school administrators, parents or community leaders. He is soft-spoken and deliberate, often taking a few seconds to consider a question before answering.
Beginning in 2001, Green was general counsel for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools for five years before being named the district’s chief operating officer. In 2008, he took over as superintendent in Guilford County, a post that he’d hold for seven years before resigning to become executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salem.
Green and his supporters say his success as a local superintendent indicates he’s up to the challenge of overseeing the state’s schools. In Guilford, he increased high school graduation rates and established two early or middle colleges. These schools are alternatives for students who may not do well in a typical high school setting, helping them earn an associate’s degree or some college credits.
Green also emphasized the importance of character development, something he pledges to continue if he is elected. “We tried to make it equally as important as academic outcomes,” he said, “and we focused on service learning as a significant part of that.”
Winston McGregor, who worked closely with Green as president of the Guilford Education Alliance, cites Green’s ability to work with different groups to get schools the resources or support they need. “He built a lot of social capital with what I would call influencers within the community,” she said. “He was just willing to try hard things and learn from failures.”
Tony Watlington, the superintendent of schools in Philadelphia, also worked with Green in Guilford County. “I’ve seen Mo walk into some of the most heated situations,” he said, “and he knew how to bring people together who had very different views about the budget, equity and education.”
Different Visions
Green, 57, and Morrow, 53, view public schools completely differently. Morrow has portrayed public schools as “the indoctrination army of the socialist dems.” “This has been happening for decades and we MUST dismantle this army before we lose our nation,” she wrote in 2020.
Green has released a television ad that includes video of Morrow saying, “We have allowed Satan to take over our schools,” as well as side-by-side photos of Morrow and GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, a Morrow ally enmeshed in scandal.
Morrow dismisses Green’s focus on her past comments as “adolescent insults” that try to divert voters’ attention from what she says is the real issue—the failure of the state’s public schools.
“Mo Green thinks if we just pour more money on the dumpster fire” students will do better, she said in an interview. “He’s wrong. This is broken from the top down, and we need a bottom-up solution.”
Green rejects Morrow’s characterizations of public schools. On the campaign trail, he talks about the need to revere the educators who work in the state’s public schools. He says that “educators” include the teachers, school counselors, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and others who play a role in educating students. “This is a noble profession,” he said.
In Green’s view, the state superintendent has two primary roles–as the chief administrative officer for the Department of Public Instruction and as the chief advocacy officer for public schools. As chief advocate, Green says he would build coalitions to urge legislators to provide money to raise teacher pay, boost reading, improve school safety, and help struggling schools.
“This is broken from the top down, and we need a bottom-up solution.”
Michele Morrow, Republican candidate for superintendent of public instruction
“Let’s have higher standards,” he said. “But then let’s also be sure that we [provide] the resources for our public schools to a level that they can actually meet those higher standards.”
It won’t be easy to get more funding. Republicans control both legislative chambers and are likely to continue to do so after this year’s elections. And they’ve made it a priority to use public funds to help parents—even wealthy parents—to send their children to private schools. “That’s a big problem for me,” Green said.
Legislative Republicans recently approved spending about $500 million to eliminate a waiting list and help K–12 students attend private schools with “Opportunity Scholarship” grants, regardless of their family’s income level. Cooper vetoed the bill, but Republicans can override it. “We know that private school vouchers are the biggest threat to public schools in a decade,” Cooper said.
Morrow supports the grants. During an online debate, she said that every parent should be able to choose the best schools for their children. The interest in vouchers, she said, is a sign that many don’t see public schools as the best option.
“It is absolutely necessary that we have healthy competition in the free market system, competition that creates the best product at the best price,” she said. “Our public school systems should be raising the bar so that we can keep everybody in our schools and we can make people want to be there.”
Green says it’s not a fair fight and that Republican leaders are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. He argues that such scholarships will eventually drain billions of dollars that could instead be spent on public schools, “leaving our public schools with not enough resources to do what they are called upon to do.”
Schools in North Carolina, like those across the nation, suffered through the pandemic. In a report issued in early September, state education officials said that public schools have started to regain some of the footing lost when students received their education virtually.
The report showed that 54 percent of students were proficient on state exams during the 2023–24 school year, a jump from a post-pandemic low of 45 percent in 2020–21. But that still lagged behind the 59 percent of students who passed the state exams in 2018–19.
The report also showed recent improvements in so-called “school performance grades,” which measure how well the students in those schools are performing, and with graduation rates. The four-year graduation rate for 2023–24 was 87 percent, a slight uptick of 1.3 percentage points since 2015.
But Truitt also said students of color still have low proficiency rates on state exams, even though they are graduating. “We have a diploma integrity problem,” she said at a meeting of the State Board of Education.
Green says the pandemic revealed to some a problem that educators were already aware of—that too many students lacked easy access to technology—and other problems that had been hiding in plain sight. Green also says many students suffered emotionally and mentally during the pandemic.
Meanwhile, families continue to look for alternatives to public schools. The state received almost 72,000 applications for private school vouchers for the 2024–25 school year. The state was able to offer vouchers to just under 16,000 students, leaving almost 55,000 students on the waitlist. The legislature just funded that backlog.
Just over 157,000 students were homeschooled in North Carolina in 2023–24, according to the N.C. Department of Administration. That’s a 60 percent increase since 2013–14, when just over 98,000 students were homeschooled in the state.
And about 145,000 students—just over 10 percent of the 1.4 million total K–12 public school students in North Carolina—enrolled in the state’s charter schools in the 2022–23 school year, according to the Department of Public Instruction. That figure is up nearly 25 percent since 2019.
Federal Role
Former President Donald Trump has suggested he would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education if he is elected this fall to a second term. Robinson, the GOP nominee for governor, has said he would reject federal money for North Carolina schools.
“If I had my way about it,” Robinson said in a video of a private event that was obtained by WRAL, “they’d send the check and I’d say, ‘Oh, no, you can have it. I don’t want your money. Your money comes with too many rotten obligations. We don’t want it. Honestly, come on. There should be no federal department of education.”
Morrow, who volunteered for Robinson’s 2020 campaign, told WRAL that she would also like to get the federal agency out of the state’s schools. “People need to recognize that the federal government, along with every dollar that they give us, there is an expectation that we are going to push an agenda that comes from them, and that comes with strings,” she said.
North Carolina received more than $1.5 billion in federal education funding in 2023–24. The biggest chunks were to support lower-income students, for nutrition programs, and to serve students with special needs.
Green is opposed to proposals to eliminate the federal education agency or to refuse federal funds earmarked for schools. “I don’t really know how anyone could even think that given how woefully underfunded our schools are,” he said.
McGregor, chief operating officer of The Innovation Project, a statewide nonprofit that works with public school leaders, says Morrow lacks the necessary experience.
“No one running a major corporation would put someone with that limited experience in charge,” she said. “But we think that’s okay with education. We are investing billions of dollars in our public schools, and good things are coming out of public schools, but there’s a huge need to modernize. You don’t need a lightweight who’s just spouting ideology and cliches.”
Truitt won’t endorse Morrow, even though they are both Republicans.
“Does she know anything about public schools?” Truitt said in an interview with EducationNC. “Someone who has never had a child in the North Carolina public schools or taught in any public school, why would that candidate want to lead the Department of Public Instruction? I think we’re all a little confused about that.”
Morrow counters that Green’s experience within what she describes as a broken system is a reason that voters should reject his candidacy.
“People are done with the establishment,” she said. “They want someone who will focus on the students. We are losing students. We are losing staff members at an alarming rate. The people of North Carolina are done with paying for that.”
Others argue that while Morrow is clearly a different sort of candidate, it’s hyperbolic to suggest that she creates some sort of existential crisis.
That’s primarily due to the limited powers of the position. The legislature determines funding for public schools and the State Board of Education sets the policies and regulations that govern them. The state superintendent is the administrator charged with implementing the policies and practices dictated by the state board and legislature.
“No one running a major corporation would put someone with that limited experience in charge. But we think that’s okay with education.
Winston McGregor, chief operating officer of The Innovation Project
“It’s not as if the superintendent is going to come in and slash funding for public schools or get rid of policies,” said Mitch Kokai, a senior political analyst with the conservative John Locke Foundation. “The superintendent is more of a cheerleader.”
While Morrow might not see herself as a cheerleader for public schools, Kokai argues that she can’t just be an attack dog. “If she is a bomb thrower, my guess is the state board would say, thanks, but we’re going in a different direction,” he said. “The legislature is also not going to throw out public education.”
Fiery Evangelist
Some of Morrow’s comments have received national attention, but so far the campaign has been mostly run beneath the radar, with the candidates traveling the state to speak to medium-sized and small groups.
Green has raised significantly more money than Morrow, nearly $1 million compared to roughly $255,000, according to the most recent campaign finance reports.
Green has received significant contributions from the N.C. Association of Educators; the North Carolina PAC for Planned Parenthood; and individuals such as Robert Lee Page, the chairman and CEO of Replacements Ltd. in Greensboro; Malbert Smith, the co-founder and chairman of MetaMetrics, an education technology company in Chapel Hill; and Mark Kuhn, the founder and president of Kuhn Advisors, a wealth management company in Durham.
Some of Morrow’s largest contributors are Raleigh developer John Kane; Robert Luddy, the founder and president of CaptiveAire Systems and an influential school privatization advocate; and Sheri Few, founder and president of U.S. Parents Involved in Education, a nonprofit pushing for more parental involvement in what and how schools teach.
In campaign appearances, Green takes on different roles.
In one role, he talks in measured tones about the value of public education in his own life and that of his family, the important role that public schools play in communities, and how his experience overseeing public schools has prepared him for the state superintendent position.
In the other role, Green is a fiery evangelist for public schools, notching up his intensity and volume. “I’ve got to be sure that we all understand what we’re dealing with,” Green told a small crowd at Pleasant Grove AME Zion Church in Concord, using a preacher’s call-and-response to get those in the pews to declare themselves champions of public schools.
He said he respects Morrow’s choice to homeschool her children, but said she lacks the experience to oversee public schools. He told them that Morrow wants to eliminate the State Board of Education, which sets education policy for North Carolina.
“And then she says things about our public schools, like they are socialist centers and indoctrination centers and cesspools of evil, encouraging parents not to send their children to public schools,” Green said. “Is this who we want to have telling and showing our children how they should comport themselves?”
Some of those at the event worried that many voters may not be familiar with Morrow, even though Green has done interviews about his opponent on national outlets such as CNN.
“A lot of people just go down the ballot and vote based off of their party,” said Mishell Williams, a candidate for the school board in Cabarrus County. “I don’t think it is well known what she stands for, and some of the things that she has said in the past.”
Green is trying to change that, one campaign stop at a time. “I believe in our public schools,” he said. “If you want to run our public schools, if you want to advocate for our public schools, I would submit to you that you have to believe in our public schools.”
Update: This article has been updated to report that a survey from the National Education Association ranks North Carolina 36th in per-student spending.
Bill Krueger was a reporter and editor at The News & Observer for nearly 24 years, spending much of his time covering state government and politics. He recently retired after 13 years as an editor at NC State magazine.