Perhaps no priority of the governor's has been reiterated more clearly or more often than the goal of expanding access to health insurance for North Carolinians.

“I’m determined to expand Medicaid,” Cooper said in one campaign commercial.

“As governor, I’ll keep fighting to expand Medicaid for working people,” he said in another. “I won’t stop, because no family should live in fear.”

During the lone gubernatorial debate in October 2020, Cooper called expansion “a moral imperative.”

The metric: Does North Carolina expand Medicaid, as contemplated in the Affordable Care Act, either outright or through a compromise measure?

Update December 2024: This promise is achieved. Arguably the single biggest issue Cooper campaigned on was passing Medicaid expansion to provide health care to the state’s working poor. Republican legislative leaders fought that for years, even changing state law to block Cooper from being allowed to do it without their permission. But the legislature relented in 2023. This month was the first anniversary of Medicaid expansion becoming law, and Cooper announced on Dec. 5 that nearly 600,000 people have now been enrolled, which is almost everyone the state believes is eligible for it. He also noted that, as part of the deal, hospitals around the state have also now forgiven medical debt for 2 million people — one in every five North Carolinians — totaling around $4 billion in relief.

Update Dec. 31, 2023: The decade-plus push on this top priority paid off in 2023, giving the governor a win on a signature issue. The General Assembly voted in March to approve expansion but tied it to passage of a new state budget, which didn’t pass until September. Expansion went into effect Dec. 1, and it will pump billions into the state’s healthcare system for years to come. As of Dec. 20, some 280,000 people had been added to the state’s Medicaid rolls. Another 300,000 may be added in the coming months. Cooper spokesman Jordan Monaghan said the administration will work around the clock to get the word out and sign people up. “After years of fighting for high-quality health care for every person in our state, this year’s launch of Medicaid expansion means more than 600,000 North Carolinians can now access the care they need to stay healthier, treat sickness earlier and have the peace of mind knowing health care is within their reach,” Monaghan said. This promise is achieved.

Update Jan. 1, 2023: This is the first January in Cooper’s six years in office when it looks like this might happen. It remains a top priority for the governor, but a newly constituted General Assembly, with an increased Republican majority compared to last year, will decide the matter. The House and Senate each passed expansion bills last year, but they didn’t come to terms on a final bill. This remains in progress.

Update Jan. 2, 2022: Good news and bad news for those who’d like to see Medicaid expand. It did expand for pregnant mothers, who will get a year of Medicaid services after birth instead of two months. Republican lawmakers also agreed to a study committee on full expansion that reports back next year. But actual expansion remains more ambition than expectation. This remains in progress.

More promises

“The first thing we’ve got to do is pay our teachers,” Cooper said in the 2020 gubernatorial debate. “We’ve got to get our teacher pay to at least the national average.”

As with so many other priorities, this required legislative cooperation. But as we’ve said elsewhere, it is not enough to try. To get full credit here, Cooper needed to succeed—or at least put the state on a solid path to accomplish this goal after he leaves office.

The metric: Does North Carolina teacher pay increase at least to the national average, based on the latest National Education Association’s rankings? Or is it on track to do so based on approved increases and general agreement among legislative leadership on future increases?

Update December 2024: This promise has failed. Cooper’s goal was a victim of political circumstances. The Republican-controlled General Assembly didn’t approve any changes to the planned teacher salary schedule this year, though Cooper, a Democrat, continued to push for increases. In April, he proposed an average 8.5% increase to teacher pay starting this school year. Under the most recent budget, they were already scheduled for an average 3% pay increase this school year. The General Assembly didn’t change that and instead prioritized something Cooper has repeatedly opposed: Expanding funding for private school vouchers to more than $500 million this year fiscal year alone. That proposal survived a Cooper veto in November. The latest National Education Association teacher pay data, for the fiscal 2023 year, shows average teacher pay hit $69,597 nationwide. In North Carolina, average teacher pay was $56,559 that year, ranking 36th nationally. With the average 4% raise last year and the 3% raise this year, the state is not on track to reach the national average. NEA data shows lawmakers would have needed to raise teacher pay 23% this year to match the 2022-23 average, more than even what Cooper had asked for in April.

Update Dec. 31, 2023: After another year of the Republican-controlled General Assembly approving teacher raises well below what the governor requested, this one seems impossible to achieve. At $54,863, North Carolina is 36th in the nation in average teacher pay, according to the ⁠latest National Education Association rankings. Those rankings are based on data from fiscal 2022. But the raises that lawmakers approved in 2023 total 7%, on average, for fiscal 2024 and 2025 combined. It would take at least a 22% increase to reach the national average, based on the latest NEA numbers — without accounting for increases planned in other states. Cooper has another year to achieve this goal. So we’ll leave it in progress, but the reality seems obvious.

Update Jan. 1, 2023: The Republican-controlled General Assembly passed raises each of the past two years. But by Cooper’s own admission, salaries have not been boosted as much as he hoped, and the state is not on track to hit the national average. That average was $65,000 for the 2020-21 school year, according to the National Education Association’s most recent report. North Carolina’s average salary in that ranking was $53,000. That was before the latest round of raises. But those raises weren’t nearly large enough for North Carolina to catch up. Cooper said in a December interview that he’d like to see a 10% across-the-board raise for teachers over the next two years. He also said he doubts the General Assembly’s Republican majority will go for that. The coming year may prove crucial on teacher pay, with conversations ongoing about an overhaul of the state’s teacher pay and licensure regime and the decades-old Leandro court case pressing the legislature to increase education funding — something Cooper has repeatedly called on lawmakers to do. We’ll leave this one in progress for now.

Update Jan. 2, 2022: The new state budget, boosted by large state surpluses and federal COVID money, included small teacher raises, bonuses up to $2,800 and a new $100 million fund to boost teacher salaries in most counties. That’s not nothing, but it’s also not on track to meet Cooper’s goal of “at least the national average,” which would be $64,133, according to the latest National Education Association numbers. These figures lag, so that’s a 2019-20 number. North Carolina’s 2019-20 figure (without changes from this latest budget) is $54,150, good for 33rd in the country. We’ll wait to chart a trend line and leave this in progress for now.

More promises

The state also was next to last in terms of funding effort, which is defined as K-12 education revenues as a share of the state’s gross domestic product.

“We’ve got to invest in education,” Cooper said during the 2020 gubernatorial debate. “We’ve got to increase our per-pupil expenditure.”

That’s simple enough, and we kept it that simple, without requiring the governor to hit a specific number. Full success required sustained increases, though, not just an increase in the final year of his term.

The metric: Does the state increase its K-12 per-pupil spending in most years of Cooper’s second term?

Update December 2024: This promise is achieved. The state’s per-pupil funding during the 2023-24 fiscal year was $7,895.48, according to North Carolina Department of Public Instruction data. That’s up from $7,596.14 the year before. It’s a $299.14 per-student increase ahead of an anticipated drop in federal K-12 spending of hundreds of dollars per student. That’s because temporary federal pandemic stimulus dollars are now used up. But because the state has increased its public K-12 spending, this promise is still achieved.

Update Dec. 31, 2023: The state's per-pupil funding for the fiscal year ending in 2023 was $7,596, according to data provided by the state Department of Public Instruction. That’s about a $170 increase from the year before. Add in federal and local funding and fiscal 2023’s per-pupil spending was $12,637 – an increase of about $292 per student over the previous year. That means the state's per-pupil spending has increased every year so far in Cooper's second term, satisfying our metric. We set a fairly low bar here, given Cooper's own complaints that the state doesn't spend enough on K-12 education, but this promise is achieved.

Update Jan. 1, 2023: This one, by definition, will be decided in the upcoming third year of Cooper’s second term, though the data that this metric is based upon lags. The most recent calculation available from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction covers the 2021-22 school year, when the state’s per-pupil spending was $7,425.95. The year before that, it was $7,155.63. That’s just state funding. When you add in federal and local funding for schools, total 2020-21 per-pupil spending in North Carolina rises to $12,345.03. Based on the trend line — and keeping in mind that Cooper has repeatedly pushed for significantly more school funding than the legislature has approved — we’re moving this promise to kept so far. But it's worth noting that the Education Law Center's latest report, relying on figures from 2020, continues to rank North Carolina near the bottom among the 50 states.

Update Jan. 2, 2022: This can’t be judged off a single year, so we’ll leave it in progress. The Education Law Center’s 2021 report, which uses numbers from 2019, still had North Carolina near the bottom of the pack.

More promises

“We must plan for the future by taking advantage of historically low interest rates to make deep investments in infrastructure with building 21st-century schools, more housing and improving water and sewer infrastructure,” the governor said in an August 2020 budget proposal, where he called for a $4.3 billion bond to be placed on the ballot, including about $2 billion for K-12 school construction.

The state legislature didn’t sign off on that plan of Cooper’s. But that doesn’t mean there’s been no progress on growing the amount of state spending for school construction.
For one, that’s normally the responsibility of local county and city governments, not the state government. But even despite that fact, the state government has boosted funding for school construction to supplement what local governments are able to afford.

The metric: Does the state provide sweeping new funding for school construction?

Update December 2024: This promise is achieved. The Needs-Based School Capital Fund has $4 million more in it this year than it did last year, and state funding for school capital projects is now $408 million. Capital funding for schools this year and last year has been less than the more than $500 million provided in each of the two years before. Still, the $408 million total for this year remains well above the $182 million averaged per year during Cooper’s first term.

Update Dec. 31, 2023: The latest state budget includes more than $400 million in school construction funding for the fiscal year ending in 2024, and it contemplates similar funding in fiscal 2025, though the second-year funding can always change. Fiscal 2024 will be the third year in a row that the state's contribution to school construction more than doubled what the state was spending during Cooper's first term, when the average annual figure was about $182 million. This doesn’t cover the nearly $13 billion in capital needs that schools cataloged in 2021. Nor does it match the $2 billion construction bond that Cooper once called for. But it does get in that neighborhood, even before accounting for federal Covid-19 relief money that many schools used for capital needs. Our metric didn't require a $2 billion bond. We said we'd look for "a state investment in school construction well beyond what the legislature has approved in recent years." We're inclined to say the money approved in the last few years counts as the "sweeping new funding" we were looking for and that this promise is achieved.

Update Jan. 1, 2023: The current state budget includes $581 million in school construction funding, far above — for the second year in a row — the five-year average from before Cooper’s second term. Another $320 million in federal COVID-19 relief money for North Carolina schools has been spent or encumbered on capital projects, so there’s an argument this promise has been achieved. However, Cooper called in 2020 for a $2 billion school construction bond, an idea that never found enough support in the legislature to pass. And the state’s latest review said that schools reported $12.8 billion in capital needs. The governor said in a December interview that he wasn’t sure whether he’d call again for a school construction bond when he rolls out his next budget proposal in March. He noted that interest rates have risen substantially, making a bond package less attractive. We’re going to keep watching this one, but for now it stays in progress.

Update Jan. 2, 2022: The state budget has more than $500 million in it for K-12 school construction this fiscal year after averaging $182 million a year over the previous five years. Nearly half of that funding, though, was lottery money leftover from previous years, in part because lottery play has gone up more than expected during the pandemic. That makes it one-time money. Next year’s school construction funding—the legislature passed a two-year budget, and the second year can still change—was set at about $300 million. These are clear increases, and school systems got billions in federal COVID funding last year, some of which will be spent on heating and air conditioning and other building upgrades. The legislature also approved policy changes that, among other things, should increase construction funding in rural areas for years to come. These are significant changes, but judged against Cooper’s $2 billion bond proposal, and a $13 billion list of construction needs, it’s not enough to consider this promise achieved. We’ll stick with in progress.

More promises

Cooper has consistently complained about corporate tax cuts the legislature phased in over the last several years, some of which he tried to stop with a 2018 budget proposal. But he was never more likely to win a roll back than Republican lawmakers were to get him to agree to new cuts.

For this promise, we focused on the future and something the governor said repeatedly, including during the 2020 gubernatorial debate: “We’ve got to stop these corporate tax cuts.”

Though it is not part of this metric, we also watched whether the governor proposed any tax increases, particularly in his annual budget proposals to the state legislature. He said during the 2020 gubernatorial debate that a tax increase would not be needed in 2021.

The metric: Does the state forgo further corporate tax cuts or roll back any already in place?

Update December 2024: This promise has failed. Cooper made no more progress on this than he had in any other year of his governorship, when he and legislative Democrats have repeatedly failed to stop GOP-backed tax cuts. In his 2024 state budget proposal Cooper asked Republicans if they’d consider continuing on with their plans to cut income taxes for most North Carolinians, but at least freeze the current tax rates for wealthy people and corporations. Cooper’s budget proposal said that by keeping the corporate tax rate at 2.5% — it’s scheduled to gradually drop to 0% by 2030 — and by freezing the personal income tax rate for married couples making more than $200,000 a year at 4.5% — it’s scheduled to gradually drop to 3.99% by 2026 — the state would bring in an additional $311.1 million next year. He proposed using $62.5 million of that on new tax credits, mostly aimed at families with young children. He would’ve spent the rest on priorities such as higher pay for teachers and other state employees. Republican lawmakers rejected Cooper’s budget plan without allowing it a vote, or even any public debate.

Update Dec. 31, 2023: The General Assembly’s Republican supermajority accelerated personal income tax cuts in the budget they passed this year and left the corporate tax cuts planned in the coming years in place. There’s nothing new here for the governor. This effort failed.

Update Jan. 1, 2023: Republicans continue to control the state legislature, so they largely control tax policy. Planned tax cuts continue to be phased in, and additional cuts may pass in 2023. We gave the governor a failing grade on this last year, and there’s no reason to change that assessment.

Update Jan. 2, 2022: The governor signed a budget with billions in tax cuts, both in personal income and business taxes. We could call that a full-on broken promise, but political reality—Republican lawmakers insisted on these cuts and included them in a long-delayed budget plan—left the governor with few options. North Carolina governors don’t have line-item veto power; they must accept the budget in full or not at all. Also, some cuts in this budget don’t take effect until after Cooper leaves office, leaving time for reversal, although that’s unlikely unless Democrats win majorities at the legislature. We’ll call this a failed promise for now and reassess in the future.

More promises

Unemployment benefits generally pay a maximum of $350 a week, and less if the person was making a small amount of money before losing their job. Benefits run out after 12 to 20 weeks, depending on the state’s unemployment rate. All of this was temporarily bolstered in the pandemic by federal extensions and benefit boosts, but those extra benefits are long gone, and Cooper wants more permanent changes.

“We must increase our state unemployment benefits, which are among the stingiest in the country, by extending the maximum number of weeks from 12 to 24 and upping the maximum benefit to $500 per week,” he said in an August 2020 budget proposal.

The metric: Does the state significantly increase both the duration of benefits and what it pays unemployed workers, either by increasing the maximum weekly benefit or by adjusting benefit calculations to increase average payouts?

Update December 2024: This promise has failed. Cooper was able to temporarily boost unemployment benefits after Hurricane Helene by using an executive order. But Republican state legislators reacted this month by passing a new law that will end those higher benefits by March of 2025. It will also ban future governors from doing anything similar. Cooper’s failure to achieve more permanent success on this goal was a victim of political circumstances. Cooper and legislative Democrats have tried for years to convince Republican legislative leaders to boost unemployment benefits. That has been strongly opposed by the state’s business lobby, since unemployment is funded by a tax on businesses. The state does have billions of dollars sitting, unused, in a dedicated savings fund for unemployment that Democrats say could be tapped to increase benefits without raising costs on businesses. But Republicans want to hang onto that money in case of a future recession or other emergency. Cooper’s office contends he deserves credit for the post-Helene boost. But that was only temporary, and the legislature has now banned other governors from using that strategy in the future. The people who got those bigger checks will certainly appreciate Cooper’s efforts. But in the end Cooper failed to achieve permanent change, due to strong legislative opposition.

Update Dec. 31, 2023: Another year has passed without movement on this issue. Cooper asked for a benefits increase in his 2023 budget proposal, and Democrats filed bills along the same lines, but none of it went anywhere. The governor hasn’t made a high-profile push on the issue, but that wasn’t likely to sway the General Assembly’s Republican supermajority. Like a lot of things on this list, there’s not much Cooper can do here. We’ll leave this in progress again, recognizing that time is running out.

Update Jan. 1, 2023: This issue fell off the radar as the economy improved for workers. It remains, according to many, an important issue in need of attention in North Carolina, which has some of the nation’s stingiest benefits. Cooper has two more years to work on this, and in the past there has been some bipartisan agreement on the issue. As of December, the state’s Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund had $3.55 billion in it, enough to fund increases. A spokesman for the governor said Cooper will continue to push for action. We’ll keep this one in progress for now.

Update Jan. 2, 2022: No movement yet, although the governor has called for increases. Republican lawmakers grumbled mightily last year over federal unemployment boosts. As the extra benefits fade further into the background, there may be enough political will to increase North Carolina’s lowest-in-the-nation benefits. We’ll leave this in progress for now.

More promises

When schools went virtual during the Covid-19 pandemic, though, it was all too obvious how much further there is to go.

“Every household needs access to high-speed internet,” Cooper said during the 2020 gubernatorial debate. “We’ve got to do better.”

Cooper proposed a $250 million bond to pay for broadband expansion, a massive move beyond the tens of millions of dollars the legislature put toward this priority in recent years.

To track this promise, we didn’t require a major bond for success, nor did we require “every household” to have access by the end of Cooper’s time as governor. But Cooper made it clear he wants to raise the bar here, and we’ll take that into account in judging the state’s efforts.

The metric: Does the state significantly increase access to broadband internet?

Update December 2024: This promise is achieved. Cooper accomplished this with a lot of monetary help from Republicans in the North Carolina legislature, as well as from stimulus funding backed by Democratic President Joe Biden and Democrats in the U.S. Congress. Regardless of which definition of “broadband” you use, broadband internet is now available to almost every single home in the state. The Federal Communications Commission changed the definition of broadband in March, to require higher speeds. The state Department of Information Technology says 95.8% of North Carolinians have access to those higher speeds. And 98.4% have access to the speeds that counted as broadband before this year’s FCC change. Hurdles do still remain, mostly in sparsely populated rural areas of western and eastern North Carolina. Hyde County is by far the worst, state data shows, with less than 1% of its 4,600 residents having access to the new higher-speed definition of broadband. And just over 40% there have access to the slower speeds that used to be considered broadband. The good news, however, is that no other county comes close to numbers that bad. In most counties, nearly everyone can get reliable internet at their home if they want it.

Update Dec. 31, 2023: We gave the governor a passing grade on this last year, and we see no reason to roll that back. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of government-funded broadband projects are underway, with more to come. The only question is how much access increases. There is no doubt the final numbers will be significant. This promise remains achieved.

Update Jan. 1, 2023: There were 212,299 North Carolina households at the start of Cooper’s second term that didn’t have access to an internet connection that fit the federal definition for broadband, according to the Cooper administration’s Department of Information Technology, which relied on Federal Communications Commission numbers. Since then, more than 9,500 households and businesses have been added, the administration said last month. As noted in last year’s update, the state and federal government earmarked $1 billion to expand broadband in North Carolina, mostly in COVID stimulus funding. The department said in December that more than $270 million of that money had been awarded, with $147 million in private sector funding to match it. Altogether that’s enough to connect another 113,000 households and businesses, the department said. Another $700 million in projects should be awarded in 2023, the department said. Almost $1 billion more in federal money will flow through the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that passed Congress in late 2021. The Cooper administration also said that awards from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will connect nearly 16,300 homes and businesses. Another project funded by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration will connect more than 15,200 households, the administration said. Much of the actual work remains to be done, but between the massive funding and the way both the governor and state legislature have prioritized this effort, we’ve seen enough. We rate this promise achieved.

Update Jan. 2, 2022: This one’s looking like it will be a success, but not enough time has passed to mark it achieved. The latest budget included $1 billion to expand broadband in the state, much of it one-time COVID stimulus money from the federal government. It will take time for that money to boost access and, for that reason, we’ll leave this one in progress.

More promises

The governor pledged repeatedly to fight climate change and create green energy jobs in the process.

Many of the details were laid out in Cooper’s Clean Energy Plan, which builds on an executive order he signed in 2018. The legislature would have to sign off on a number of things to enact that plan, which runs about 150 pages, and success requires cooperation from various industries, including electricity producers.

But a major goal gets laid out right up front: a 40% reduction in statewide greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. That’s measured by the state’s biennial Greenhouse Gas Inventory, which we relied on in assessing this goal.

We also consulted with experts in judging the governor’s efforts on climate change and kept in mind how hard he pushed on the issue.

The metric: Does the state hit or get on track to hit by 2025 the 40% greenhouse gas emissions reduction?

Update December, 2024: Cooper achieved mixed results on this promise. The state will not meet his 2025 goal. But there’s been significant progress, and North Carolina is on target to meet Cooper’s goal soon, possibly under Gov.-elect Josh Stein. According to Cooper’s Department of Environmental Quality, in a report last updated in October, North Carolina will have reduced emissions by 32% as of 2025. If the current trends continue, that report found, emissions will be down 43% by 2030. So Cooper’s goal of 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is within sight, but it will likely happen just a little later than he hoped — unless something happens between now and 2030 to push those goals back even further into the future.

Greenhouse gasses come from a number of sources. One of Cooper’s goals in reducing emissions has been to get people and governments to replace gas-guzzling cars, trucks and buses with electric cars and other “zero-emission vehicles.” Cooper is ahead of schedule on his goal there: He had said North Carolina should have 80,000 zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025, and 1.25 million by 2030. The state broke the 80,000 milestone two years early, in 2023. Cooper has also pointed to his track record of using economic incentives to lure new factories to North Carolina in the clean energy industry, such as a massive new Toyota plant near Greensboro to build batteries for electric vehicles. “Under Governor Cooper’s leadership, North Carolina has become the epicenter of clean energy while creating good-paying jobs, reducing emissions, and protecting our environment,” a Cooper spokesman said.

Update Dec. 31, 2023: The General Assembly passed sweeping energy legislation in 2021 with House Bill 951, which lays out a blueprint for carbon emission reductions in the state's power sector. Cooper has also pushed to boost electric vehicle production in North Carolina. Even so, the 40% goal seems to be in danger. The state’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory is only updated every two years, so we don’t have new projections, but last year’s inventory predicted a 30% reduction. Cooper’s office notes that projection is based on data from 2018, and that it doesn’t take into account the impact of House Bill 951 and other policy changes. “Claiming North Carolina is unlikely to meet our greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals based on outdated data that does not take into account the state’s most significant climate legislation is inaccurate and devoid of critical context,” Cooper spokesman Jordan Monaghan said. Environmental groups cheered House Bill 951’s passage but have since been discouraged by its implementation. The Southern Environmental Law Center says Duke Energy will rely far too much on natural gas to replace coal-fired plants. “Duke Energy's proposed plans have been disappointing, and getting worse,” SELC spokeswoman Kathleen Sullivan said in an email. “Under Duke's latest proposed plan, it would build almost three times as much … natural gas generation as it proposed last time.” North Carolina’s population growth and run of economic success also makes this an uphill battle. In a late November regulatory filing Duke Energy said its latest projections on top-end electricity demand would likely be about eight times what it predicted two years ago. Zooming out, the World Meteorological Organization recently said this year was likely to be the hottest in recorded history, and the past nine years have been the warmest nine in 174 years of recorded observations. Heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions produced by burning fossil fuels around the world continue to break records. North Carolina’s 40% reduction goal is a small part of the answer, and Cooper has worked hard to recruit companies that will make components for electric vehicles, so North Carolina is poised to play a big role in reducing drivers’ dependence on fossil fuels well beyond the state’s borders. Still, we’re not optimistic the state will hit Cooper’s 40% target. He has one year to go, though, so we'll leave this promise in progress for now.

Update Jan. 1, 2023: The state’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory report projects a 30% decrease in greenhouse gases by 2025, well short of this goal. But that report notes that its projections don’t include all reductions expected from policies enacted after 2020. That would include House Bill 951, which calls for a 70% reduction by 2030 and is the blueprint for a long-term carbon plan that was due this weekend. Experts need time to digest this immensely important plan and its impact, and we’re keeping this one in progress for now.

Update Jan. 2, 2022: This one has seen progress. The legislature passed a new energy bill. The Cooper administration is moving toward joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative but has not consummated it. North Carolina is part of a three-state collaborative on wind power and a 15-state consortium pledging to reduce emissions from heavy trucks and buses. All these moves should reduce emissions, according to environmental groups, but follow through steps remain. We’re also interested to see what the Cooper administration’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory report, expected in early 2022, has to say. It’s too early to judge this particular goal, and we’ll keep it in progress for now.

More promises

He established a task force that made a number of recommendations in a report released in January 2021, including four metrics by which improvements could be judged:

• “Increase the number of educators of color admitted in the state’s educator preparation pathways (e.g., traditional four-year preparation, residency pathways, etc.) by at least 15% each year.”
• “Increase the cohort completion rate of pre-service educators of color to at least 80% across all preparation programs and pathways.”
• “Ensure that at least 80% of completers of color across educator preparation pathways pass the licensure exams required to receive a Continuing Professional License (CPL) on their first attempt.”
• “Retain at least 95% of the state’s educators of color each year.”

The governor also pushed to expand the state’s Teaching Fellows program, which pays university tuition for students who agree to teach in state, to include the state’s historically Black colleges and universities. That’s a measurable goal, and we required it for success.

To clear this goal, the state also needed to meet at least one of his task force’s recommendations.

The metric: Does the Teaching Fellows program expand to multiple HBCUs in North Carolina, and does the state meet at least one of the other metrics laid out by the governor’s task force?

December 2024 update: Cooper achieved this promise. The North Carolina Teaching Fellows program is in two historically Black universities — Fayetteville State University and North Carolina A&T — and is in the state’s only historically American Indian university, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. But that’s only one half of the equation. One of four other metrics also needed to be achieved. Three of the goals weren’t met last year — on retaining teachers of color, getting more enrolled in preparation pathways for a teaching career, and helping at least 80% get their teaching license on their first try — but Cooper’s office said it met the fourth goal and has at least made substantial progress toward the rest.

Cooper’s office says the state achieved his goal of having 80% of pre-service educators of color complete educator preparation programs. That’s true, although one problem with tracking this is that the most recent update is a 2023 report based on numbers from previous years. But while the data may be old, it’s the most up-to-date information that exists. Meeting that metric, in combination with Cooper’s work pressing the legislature to bring back the Teaching Fellows program — and then extend it to HBCUs — satisfies our requirements for success.

Cooper’s office notes that while the other metrics weren’t met, the numbers are improving. “Diversity in the classroom is a proven driver of student success for all students, and during his tenure, Governor Cooper prioritized initiatives to recruit, prepare, support, and retain educators of color,” a Cooper spokesman told us.

Update Dec. 31, 2023: The numbers we use to make this judgment remain mixed. Cooper’s task force on the issue reports that the state dipped below its 15% annual increase goal when it comes to people of color admitted to educator preparation programs. Eclipsing that goal in 2022 — by a wide margin — was one of the reasons we marked this promise achieved in our last update. But we expect dips in a metric like this, particularly following success. And the task force’s latest report indicates that the state crossed a separate threshold included in our metrics: Boosting educator preparation program completion rates for people of color to at least 80%. That, combined with the successful expansion of the state’s Teaching Fellows program in 2021 to multiple historically Black colleges and universities, satisfies our metric. Cooper has prioritized this goal and gotten results. We see no reason to downgrade it from achieved.

Update Jan. 1, 2023: An October presentation from the state Department of Public Instruction indicates that the total number of people of color teaching in North Carolina decreased over the last year. However, admissions to the state’s educator preparation pathways increased by nearly 40% — well above the 15% goal. That means the state is building a larger pipeline of diverse teaching candidates. The cohort completion rate is a lagging indicator, so the latest information available there is from 2019. The licensure exam passage rate rose to 70%, below the goal, but an increase of 6 percentage points from the previous year. The retention rate dropped to 89.9%, also below the goal. The admissions data is promising. And, as noted last year, the Teaching Fellows program has expanded to HBCU campuses. Furthermore, Anthony Graham, the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Winston-Salem State University, who is also chairman of the governor’s task force on the issue, gives Cooper “an ‘A’” for continuing to prioritize the issue, saying the governor “has been very engaged in receiving updates.” Cooper also extended the task force’s appointment through the end of 2023. This is a long-term issue, likely requiring consistent prioritization. We will continue to monitor things, wary of regression. But based on our metric, this promise has been achieved.

Update Jan. 2, 2022: The teaching fellows program expanded this summer to three new schools: Fayetteville State University, North Carolina A&T and UNC-Pembroke. The first two are HBCUs, and Pembroke is the university system’s only state-designated historically American Indian university. The other metrics will take more time to judge, and the Cooper administration said that it’s working to implement task force recommendations. Other efforts are also underway. For example: Western Carolina University started a “Call Me MISTER” program this year, partnering with Clemson University, which piloted a similar program in South Carolina more than 20 years ago and helped increase the number of Black male teachers in that state. Overall, this is another metric where we see improvement, but it’s too early to make a call, so we’ll leave it in progress for now.

More promises

As we did with his first term, and for former Gov. Pat McCrory before him, WRAL News has been tracking Gov. Roy Cooper’s progress on campaign promises throughout his eight years as the state’s top executive.

We updated this promise-tracker each year, and this latest update is as of December 2024 — the final days of Cooper’s time as governor.

He was prevented by term limits from seeking a third straight term and will be replaced in January by his longtime protégé, fellow Democrat Josh Stein.

We tracked nine promises Cooper made while running for office, from expanding Medicaid to fighting climate change and increasing diversity in North Carolina’s teaching ranks.

He achieved five of those promises, failed to achieve three others, and had mixed results on one.

Making good on these promises required impact, not just effort. But our grades acknowledge the political realities of a divided government. Cooper is a Democrat, but for his entire time in office the North Carolina General Assembly has been controlled by Republicans. The two sides have worked together on some issues, such as economic development, but they’ve also been deeply at odds over many others.

Cooper campaign promise tracker (first term)

Grades are assigned by WRAL’s @NCCapitol team. As we have said before this is an honest but imperfect attempt to measure Cooper’s progress, not necessarily on what he should’ve done, but on whether he’s delivered on what he told supporters he would, when they put him in office in 2016 and again in 2020.

How it works

Scroll down and click on a promise for a summary, its source, and its status. To return to this page, click the key at the top of the screen. We rate promises on the following scale:

What we're tracking

Here are the nine promises we're tracking. Click on each headline for more about what Cooper promised and how he is doing.