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Gov. Easley announced that the state would conduct performance audits of every low performing High School in North Carolina as a way to get at problems in low performing schools.

Click here for the news release. Come back in a few minutes for updates, including audio.

Update4: Click here for links to Guilford County's own audits of its low performing schools.

Audio Update: Audio from this morning’s announcements: (I'm told our audio server's issues have been fixed.)

• Click here for Easley’s opening spiel, along with some comments from State Board of Education Chairman Howard Lee.
  
• Click here for an initial round of Q+A on the audit effort.
  
• Click here for a second round of Q+A on the audit effort.

Update3: Click here for the AP's take on all this.

Update2: From Terry Grier, Superintendent of Guilford County Schools: “This is the first I’ve heard of it … We’ve not heard anything about this, but by the same token we welcome it.”

Grier said that Guilford County has already done an audit of its three low performing schools.

Update: Easley was joined as the news conference announcing this by a host of education and legislative folks, including Rep. Maggie Jeffus and Sen. Kay Hagan, both Greensboro Democrats.

Both legislators said they thought this was a good idea.

Jeffus said she often hears from folks, regular people and campaign opponents alike, that the state cannot simply throw money at public schools and expect to fix the education problem.

“This is one way we can show whether it (money) will help or not,” Jeffus said.

I asked Easley if this audit was requested by the local schools or whether superintendents might feel this is at all heavy handed by the state. Some quotes in response:

• “I don’t expect any push-back from superintendents,” Easley said. He said he has been assured all superintendents are on board with this effort.
• “This is not a gotcha thing,” he said. “We are from Raleigh and we’re here to help.”
• Said that during the last legislative session the General Assembly gave local school districts a lot of funding in terms of teacher salaries, extra money for struggling students, etc… “It’s not as though we’re trying to police something we haven’t given them the resources to do the job.” I think that meant that the state wants to make sure all that money is doing something.

The state has budgeted about $10.8 billion on education for the current fiscal year.

With help form our crack education staff back in Greensboro, I’ll be asking the folks back there whether this is a good idea or no.