Leandro had to end. A ‘sound basic education’ still matters

Courts cannot build excellent schools. North Carolina still has to try

Did anybody honestly believe that a single judicial order could fix a state’s education system?

That was always the fantasy at the heart of North Carolina’s landmark Leandro case.

What began more than three decades ago as a lawsuit by families in low-wealth counties became something else entirely: a sprawling judicial effort to supervise education policy. In its final years, it became a fight over whether a court could effectively declare how much money the Constitution required lawmakers to spend.

This week, the North Carolina Supreme Court brought that experiment to an end. After 32 years, the majority held that the case had drifted too far from the claims originally pleaded.

Leandro, as a legal matter, is dead, as it should be. That does not mean the underlying idea should die with it.

A memorable ruling

For readers who have not followed every twist in this saga, here is the short version.

Leandro began in the mid-1990s, when families in Hoke, Cumberland, Halifax, Robeson and Vance counti…