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State legislators want high school students to take the stanadardized tests ACT and WorkKeys, but provided no money in the budget for them.

Legislators last year endorsed the move toward these national standardized tests as a means of measuring school quality and student readiness for college or work. Schools gave 11th graders the ACT this spring, but the state Department of Public Instruction had to scrape together the money to pay for it.

June Atkinson, state superintendent of public instruction, told legislative leaders in a letter last week that the department probably wouldn't be able to scrounge up enough money to pay for another round.

UPDATED: State Democratic lawmaker Tricia Cotham penned a op-ed in The Charlotte Observer on Sunday that highlights what she says are stark differences between the political parties when it comes to education funding.

Cotham argued Mitt Romney the Republican lawmakers don't get it: "What’s most troubling is that Romney’s comments reflect what has become the mainstream attitude toward education in today’s Republican Party. According to the GOP, teachers and first responders are nothing more than “big government”; struggling public schools should be abandoned in favor of private education; the government has no business trying to make college more affordable."

Read the full piece here.

A virtual charter school with the potential to siphon millions of dollars from traditional public schools will pit school-choice advocates against the state’s education establishment at a Monday court hearing.

A Wake County Superior Court judge is scheduled to hear arguments on whether an online charter school program that would be run by a for-profit company should be allowed to open in North Carolina in August, as a state administrative law judge ruled in May. The state Board of Education hopes to persuade the Superior Court judge that proper procedures were not followed for a new program that represents one of the more overt commercial aspects of the school-choice movement. Full story here.

Other political headlines below.

What if Pat McCrory becomes governor and a third of his education platform is already built?

Several points in Republican candidate's education plan are already sitting on Gov. Bev Perdue's desk. The education plan Senate Republicans promoted this year had significant overlap with McCrory's, and the proposals are rolled into the state budget legislators passed last week.

End third grade social promotion? Check.

The Senate plan would limit promotion of third graders who do not read at grade level.

After months of watching the action from the sidelines Gov. Bev Perdue is back at center stage. Three weighty issues are on her desk, and state employees, natural gas companies, environmentalists, prosecutors and teachers are watching to see if she will get out her veto stamp. So far she isn't tipping her hand. Read more here.

More political headlines:

--North Carolina ranked 45th in the nation in per-student spending on public schools in 2010, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Thursday. The state’s public school systems spent an average of $8,409 per-student in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010, according to the report. That compares to national per-student spending of $10,615. 

Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton said he told Gov. Bev Perdue he would veto the budget. "I am not a fan of this budget," Dalton said after a speech Thursday in which he criticized how the Republicans continue to under-fund education. He said he told Perdue where he stands. "I would be inclined to veto that budget. They did repair some of the cuts that were coming this year. But there are still additional cuts this year over and above the cuts last year. I think that gets lost."

Republican rival Pat McCrory, who also spoke at the N.C. Business Committee for Education annual meeting in Raleigh, said he would sign the budget.

Perdue was scheduled to give a speech at the event but she canceled at the last minute.

House and Senate leaders presented a $20.2 billion budget Wednesday that the chambers will vote on this week.

The budget includes 1.2 percent raises for state employees and teachers, and a 1 percent cost of living increase for state retirees.

A $10 million plan to compensate state eugenics victims did not make it in to the budget. Senate leader Phil Berger said there was not support in his chamber for payments. The compensation effort is likely dead this year.

House Speaker Thom Tillis says the budget is nearly finished. After a few details are decided, the plan is to read it in tonight. There will be a press conference tomorrow morning. 

Big differences in the House and Senate versions of the budget : school spending and roads. "Right now it's looking like a consensus budget that takes some of the better aspects of the House budget and some good ideas on the Senate budget in terms of changes in recurring and nonrecurring sources," Tillis said. 

The plan is to have a vote by Friday and give Gov. Bev Perdue 10 days to sign or veto it, Tillis said. The veto deadline would expire Sunday, July 1. That would give the legislature time to deal with a veto override in time to end the session by July 2, Tillis said. 

A contingent of Democratic lawmakers and education officials held a news conference at the Legislative Building on Wednesday to decry a proposal to give corporations a tax break for contributing money to low-income students to move from public to private schools.

Rep. Rick Glazier, a Democrat from Fayetteville, said Democrats in the House and Senate “will do everything conceivable to fight this bill.” He said it was part of a larger conservative agenda to push private schools that would lead to the “destruction of public education as we know it in North Carolina.”

William Harrison, chairman of the state Board of Education, said the tax-credit bill puts “private interests above the common good” and funnels state money into private enterprise. He said it was part of a progression of legislation that in a few years would lead to offering private school vouchers to everyone.

“We’ve slipped a major policy issue into a budget bill,” Harrison said. “That seems to be the method of doing things in Raleigh these days.”

Gov. Bev Perdue on Thursday proposed taxing video sweepstakes games to fund the state’s public schools.

As the General Assembly prepares for what could be its final week of budget negotiations next week, Perdue challenged lawmakers to squeeze a new source of state revenue out of the sweepstakes games. “We need to tax the heck out of them and regulate them, regulate them hard, and tax the heck out of them,” said Perdue, a Democrat.

She said such taxes were not her preferred method of raising money for education. Perdue held up a copy of her proposed budget, saying that plan was preferable. But her proposed budget, with its recommended sales tax increase, was dead on arrival at the Republican-led legislature.