The funding package President Donald Trump signed Feb. 3, 2026, includes $79 billion for the U.S. Education Department, representing a rejection by Congress of the president's plan to close the department. (Photo by kali9/Getty Images)
A literacy tutoring program that’s helped thousands of struggling K-3 readers in North Carolina in recent years is appealing to state lawmakers for a financial lifeline.
The North Carolina Education Corps, created with federal pandemic relief funds, has served more than 26,000 students across 33 North Carolina counties since 2021.
This school year, however, with those temporary federal dollars gone and no recurring state appropriation in place, the organization’s leaders say it’s already scaled back to less than half its former size, and could shrink further without legislative action.
The program recruits and trains tutors — including retired teachers, college students and parents — who provide small-group reading instruction during the school day to K–3 students who are below grade-level benchmarks.
Last school year, the organization had 453 tutors working in 26 districts and serving 7,994 students. This school year, it has 117 tutors in 11 districts and expects to serve about 3,000 students.
This week, program leaders told members of the General Assembly’s Joint Oversight Committee on Education that without $5 million in recurring state funding, the nonprofit’s in-school tutoring program will remain significantly smaller next year.
The program was initially funded with $13.5 million in federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, known as ESSER, allocated by the General Assembly. That funding expired in December 2024, midway through the 2024–25 school year.
State lawmakers later approved $3 million in nonrecurring state funds to carry the program through the remainder of last school year. But the General Assembly has not adopted a full state budget that includes recurring support.
“The legislature wanted to see the results of our program before providing ongoing funding,” said John-Paul Smith, the nonprofit’s executive director.
During his presentation to the panel, Smith cited a study by the University of Michigan that found students participating in the NCEC tutoring program gained an average of 2.2 months more in literacy skills than comparable students receiving other school-based interventions.
Rep. Hugh Blackwell (R-Burke) questioned whether those gains were enough to help students who are already years behind.
“Let’s say we’ve got a student who is two years behind where he should be,” Blackwell said, “It sounds like at this rate, how does that student ever catch up?”
Smith said earlier intervention tends to produce stronger results. He said multiple studies have shown students are more likely to close learning gaps in elementary school than in later grades.
“The earlier you intervene, the better,” he said. “The later you wait, the harder it is for students to catch up.”
In an interview with NC Newsline, Smith said recurring funding of $5 million would allow the NCEC to return to its 2024–25 service levels. Even then, he said, the program would still reach only a fraction of the roughly 230,000 North Carolina K–3 students who are below grade-level reading benchmarks.
“Even if we get $5 million, it’s just scratching the surface of what the need is in North Carolina,” he said.
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