Thoughts on three things going WELL in North Carolina

Like many commentators, I spend much of my time critiquing the dysfunction in our government. That seems defensible enough to me; Trump and the NCGOP have misgoverned our society for years, with destructive consequences. But such an emphasis on failure also makes my writing feel extremely negative. I feel like I should challenge my preconceptions, ask questions about whether in this grim landscape there are flickers of light and success. So today I’ll explore a couple of things that are going well in North Carolina.

1. Population growth

Something must be going right in a state that’s gaining population. This seems like commonsense, but some contrarians attempt to argue that the South’s growth is simply an artifact of the cost-of-living. The problem is that some of the cheapest states in the country are losing population. Mississippi and West Virginia both have very low housing costs and declining population. Sometimes a low cost of living can reflect poverty rather than abundant land and housing. While some parts of North Carolina, notably northeastern NC and the poorest parts of the mountains, fit that description, we are mostly growing because we offer attractive amenities to people in other states.

Charlotte is the crown jewel. I love Charlotte, and when you go there you can feel the sense of bustle and enterprise that pervades the city’s civic culture. In the last year, Charlotte grew faster than any other city in the country. Forty-nine-thousand people moved to the city, a larger gain than the whole of California. It’s as if the entire population of Burlington, Vermont moved to Charlotte, and then 7,000 more people followed them. Charlotte is growing about 20% faster even than Austin, Texas, often the champion metro for population growth.

That’s great news for Charlotte—but what about the rest of the state? It will surprise no one that the Raleigh metropolitan area and retirement towns around Wilmington are also attracting thousands of new residents. But the narrative in our civic discourse often suggests that rural North Carolina, almost all of it, is losing young people and businesses. I would have thought the same thing. But according to the state Budget Office, 72 North Carolina counties have gained population since 2020, which by definition means that more a few rural communities are growing, in spite of the common perception. It may be time to adjust our assumptions about growth and loss in North Carolina—and to think much harder about the systemic racism that may underlie so many northeastern, African American counties losing population while much of the state grows.

2. Economic growth

North Carolina has seen its economic growth outpace the national average in recent quarters. In the third quarter of 2025, the state’s GDP grew by a robust 5.6%. The Raleigh metro area continued to boast some of the strongest job growth in the country. As John Hood, a well-informed conservative analyst, observed in the Triangle Business Journal, even many rural counties performed relatively well according to some economic metrics. We have picked up solidly in the last year or two.

The NCGOP likes to exaggerate North Carolina’s economic record. Since they took control of state government, our economy has basically tracked the national average and wage growth has been slacker than the country’s, not a surprise given our history of low wages and pronounced rural poverty. Tax cuts have not created an economic miracle in North Carolina. But many North Carolinians have prospered since the pandemic, and it would reflect a hidebound obstinance not to take note of and appreciate this relative success.

3. Achievement among high-end students

The best breakdown of America’s education challenges came from writer E.J. Dionne. Rebutting the narrative of an overarching crisis, Dionne delineated three separate challenges facing the country’s students. The first was that the poorest students were being failed severely. The second was mediocre performance among the broad mass of relatively average students. And the third challenge was that America’s best students were not being offered coursework with enough rigor to compete with their peers in other countries.

The highest-achieving students are now doing a bit better on international tests than they were when Dionne wrote his column. They tend to perform equally with high achievers in other Western countries but do worse than the best students in East Asian countries. I want America’s brightest students (and all of its students) to lead the world, but I am not apoplectic that they lag some Asian students on standardized tests. East Asian countries like South Korea often generate sterling test scores but only by pushing their students so hard that their mental health suffers tremendously. We don’t need to worsen our youth mental-health crisis.

How about North Carolina? In our state, there are indications that the highest achievers may be reaching new levels of success. Participation in AP classes has increased in recent years. Further, the state’s students are scoring higher on the ACT. North Carolina’s ACT scores remain troublingly below the national “benchmark” for college readiness. But I think it is reasonable to stipulate that North Carolina’s best students are putting in better performance in coursework and standardized tests, and that the group of high-achieving students in growing, at least based upon AP classes.

North Carolina has long had this kind of lopsided achievement curve. In the twentieth century, the state built an exceptional public university system to educate the sons (and later daughters) of executives in the burgeoning cigarette and textile industries. The textile executives were content to let the state’s public schools languish—and may even have preferred a poor public school system to the degree that it left workers uneducated and less likely to challenge the authority of management. But we made an effort to offer a world-class college education at least to the privileged few.

Unfortunately, inequity persists today. North Carolina’s reading scores are falling and math scores are doing no better than the nation’s other students, which is not well. But we are selling our schools and our students short if we do not acknowledge the excellent achievement some kids are posting at the highest levels. Public education is resilient in North Carolina—and we have the capacity to do so much better.

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