Wake County Superior Court Judge Howard Manning doesn't think much of nonsensical school labels. 

Manning, who is overseeing the state's response to the Leandro education lawsuit, heard reports from education officials on funding and efforts to improve schools with lots of failing students. 

Under the state system, failing schools that are labeled "low performing" get extra help from the state to improve. But the state has schools where 60 percent or more students fail standardized tests yet escape the "low performing" tag. That's because student performance at those schools improves enough from one year to the next so that the schools show student growth.

 "It's still a fraud," said Manning. "It's still an educational escape from reality."

Manning said the schools know how to take students who barely fail one year and get their performance up enough to pass their tests the next year. A few students' scores improve, he said, but the school as a whole is no better off. 

He said the schools "hide behind the, quote, growth joke situation."

 The hearing continues today.

A Wake County Superior Court judge Monday upheld a $50 annual fee charged to attorneys to help pay for a public campaign financing fund, but he also gave them a bit more discretion in how the money can be spent.

Two attorneys, Catherine M. El-Khouri and W. Anthony Purcell, had sued the state over the fees, which are assessed through the North Carolina State Bar, Dan Kane reports.

The campaign fund pays for publicly-financed campaigns for state appellate judicial races and for a voter education guide. The attorneys had contended the fee represented a violation of their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and was an impermissible tax. They sued in October 2007.

Judge Howard E. Manning Jr. found that the fee is legal, but he also granted attorneys the option of designating their $50 fee to the voter guide. That way, he said, they would not be paying into the campaigns of candidates that they don't like.

"Overall, it's a positive decision for continued funding of a program that Judge Manning says serves a compelling state interest," said Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, a nonprofit that supports public campaign financing.

He said the attorney fee generates $1.1 million annually, about half of the total funds for the judicial public financing program. The rest comes from a voluntary $3 check-off on the state income tax form.

Update: Bob Orr, a former state Supreme Court judge who heads the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, also found plenty to like in Manning's decision. The institute had supported the lawyers' suit.

"From our perspective, the constitutional claim the suit was based on was upheld by the court," Orr said. "The remedy may be broader than we advocated for, but the underlying claim was upheld as unconstitutional. The $50 fee cannot go to candidates by fiat of the General Assembly."

Superior Court Judge Howard Manning said Monday that an new executive order signed by Gov. Beverly Perdue requiring her administration to retain government e-mail fully complies with the state's public records law.

However, the judge took no action on a motion from lawyers for Perdue to dismiss the lawsuit filed by several North Carolina news organizations, including The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, over former Gov. Mike Easley's mass deletion of government e-mails.

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Gov. Beverly Perdue made a surprise visit to two Halifax schools, a district a state judge says is failing students.

Halifax will be the subject in Wake County Superior Court next week, when Judge Howard Manning will consider the state's plan to provide the district with more guidance on how to teach and spend money.

Perdue visited a Halifax  elementary school and high school Friday, meeting with principals, teachers and students, according to her office. She observed a classroom at each school.

"It was important to me to get a first-hand look at the schools in Halifax County," Perdue said in a statement. "The state will work with local education leaders to maximize efforts to improve student achievement. Strong leaders, strong teachers and strong community support can make a difference."

Halifax students fall below state averages in all tested measures. None of its schools meet federal progress standards.

In a letter to state administrators, Manning said Halifax was committing "academic genocide," and hinted he was going to order the state take control of the district's schools.

The state will intervene with Halifax County Schools.

Gov. Beverly Perdue announced today that the State Board of Education Chair and CEO Bill Harrison, schools Superintendent June Atkinson and the N.C. Department of Public Instruction will make an unusual intervention to help the low-performing district.

"Dr. Harrison, Superintendent Atkinson and I will act aggressively in Halifax County and all of North Carolina to make sure our schools have the support, direction and accountability that give our kids a chance to succeed," Perdue said in a statement.

Under the plan, Public Instruction staffers will coach school principals, spend weeks training teachers, oversee the hiring of new educators and provide help seeking state and federal funding.

Approximately one third of high school students in Halifax County are considered proficient on end-of-year tests, compared to 68 percent for the state average.

The plan will be presented to Judge Howard Manning on April 29.

The watchdog group Democracy North Carolina offered a reminder Friday of just why North Carolina got rid of video poker.

Research Director Bob Hall warns of a "pandora's box of mischief and miscreants" if Judge Howard Manning's order from Thursday overturning the state's ban on the electronic gambling machines is upheld: "Video-poker," Hall wrote, "has rightly been labeled the 'crack cocaine' of gambling."

Hall's group was ringing the alarm bell about video poker and its influences on N.C. politics years before former state Transportation Secretary Garland Garrett or former House Speaker Jim Black went to prison on federal corruption charges. Garrett was convicted of running an illegal gambling operation involving video poker, and the federal investigation that brought down Black started with video poker.

Hall and his group helped drive the 2006 State Board of Elections investigation into video poker contributions to Black, which totaled about $200,000 between 2000 and 2004, Hall reminded reporters in a memo Friday. Video poker money made up more than a third of the $30,000 that Black paid to then-Rep. Michael Decker in 2003 to switch parties and vote to keep Black in the speaker's chair. 

Legislative leaders say they do not have enough extra cash on hand to pay the $747.9 million a Wake County judge says must go to public schools.

Superior Court Judge Howard Manning Jr. has ordered the state to turn over civil fines that were illegally withheld from public schools for more than nine years, but he left it up to the General Assembly to decide where to come up with the money and when.

But legislators say that instead of coming up with new revenue, they will comply with Manning's order by tapping money already earmarked for K-12 schools.

"Everybody assumed from the beginning that it would come out of the state's education budget," State House Speaker Joe Hackney, a Chapel Hill Democrat, said Tuesday. "We really don't have $700 million in new money."

That means the legal win may be a pyrrhic victory. (N&O) 

A Wake County judge said Thursday that he will make the state give up as much as $768 million.

Superior Court Judge Howard Manning Jr. said that the state should give to schools most of the money collected from civil fines for almost a decade leading up to 2005.

That year, the state Supreme Court ruled that the money wasn't being given to public schools as required by state law and sent the case back to Manning to decide how much should be distributed.

Manning rejected most arguments aimed at limiting the payout.

Under stte law, the money must be used to pay for new technology. (N&O)