Best Practices

Recent North Carolina legislation marked its continued commitment to collaborting on education reform. On July 27, 2007 the state's Senate established the Reaching One’s Potential for Excellence (ROPE) Scholars pilot program to tackle achievement gaps and graduation rates starting in the middle grades. The legislation describes the program launch in three geographically distributed school units—at least one urban and one rural—where the class size will be capped at 17 students.  Participating schools will be afforded access to high speed broadband Internet and use SAS EVAAS (Education Value Added Assessment System) software to track student progress over time. But what might be ROPE’s greatest potential for change is its high regard of parental involvement. The very basis of ROPE is that students must enter the program in dual partnership with a parent/guardian and the local administrative unit. This partnership is further underscored by every participating school's mandatory provision of a coordinator to assist with parental and community communication and understanding of the program, as well as the overall academic system.

This innovative legislation, and the many of its kind in North Carolina, has an interesting history.  In 1983, the North Carolina Business Committee for Education (NCBCE) was founded. Comprising North Carolina’s leading businesses and corporations, NCBCE functions as an advocate, resource and business voice in public education. Its chief concern: the link between education and economic growth. NCBCE has issued recommendations and taken part in countless, if not all, of North Carolina’s education initiatives. The committee has been the constant and intensifying current, guiding the state’s reform. It was NCBCE that first brought attention to the fact that education didn’t change with the times. 

It is no surprise then that when North Carolina’s middle grades produced disappointing achievement data, NCBCE’s voice guided reform. In 2002, the second Middle Grades Task Force gathered. Twenty-nine of the state’s education leaders in public schools, universities and colleges, state Parent Teacher Association, business organizations, the North Carolina Middle School Association and the Department of Public Instruction staff, in conjunction with input from focus groups across the state, all contributed to Last Best Chance 2004: Educating Young Adolescents in the 21st Century. The publication hankered in on the vast cultural changes, which serve to outdate the current system. More importantly it provided suggestions for reform.

Although collaboration has always guided North Carolina’s education reform efforts, the creation of Last Best Chance 2004 served as a reminder of the power of communication. That same year the state launched North Carolina Window for Information on Student Education (NC WISE), an electronic student data system that, by 2008, will operate in all of the state’s 115 school districts and 100 charter schools. In partnership with NC WISE, Learn NC, which started out as a small database of resources for teachers, now averages 9,000 visitors a day from around the globe, receiving hits from as far as China and Singapore. In 2006, the North Carolina School Connectivity Program was launched; their motto is “Connecting North Carolina Students To Future-Ready Classrooms and Schools Today.”

In strengthening partnerships and ties between key figures and groups, efficiency in initiatives and reform efforts soared. In 2005, Governor Easley created the first Center for 21st Century Practices, a component of the Business Committee for Education.  By the 2006-07 academic year, the state passed new exit standards, including a graduation project. In conjunction, NCBCE published 21st Century Graduates: A Closer Look at the North Carolina Graduation Project. Then, on June 8, 2007, a press release announced that the state Board of Education unanimously approved a new set of graduation requirements. “The Future Ready Core” will begin with the class of 2009-10.  These students will still have to successfully complete a graduation project as well as score proficiently on end-of-course assessments in Algebra I, Biology, English I, Civics and Economics and History. Raising the statewide mathematics requirement one unit per student (with an overall four-unit requirement for math), The Future Ready Core kicks the rigor up a few notches in order to, according to the Board Chairman, “ensure that students graduate with the academic foundation they need for success in the global economy.” 

The notion of a 21st century education has been the guiding current of North Carolina’s education reform efforts for a long time. Years of work toward that goal have preceded the state’s recent feats, but it was well worth the work—not just for North Carolina—but for all of the states working toward the same goal. In June, The National Partnership for 21st Century Skills named North Carolina’s statewide educational policy practice of the year. The awards were based on innovation, potential for replication in other states and the extent to which the practices address the national partnership’s mission. Ken Kay, president and founder of the Partnership, credited North Carolina for creating a statewide initiative based upon key aspects of the Partnership’s framework and one that includes metrics for professional development, assessment and standards; in his own words, “North Carolina’s work creates a model 21st skills’ policy for other states to replicate.”

“Regardless of race, socioeconomic, or other factors, students who have significant adults actively involved in their education are more successful…To engage parents and the community in meaningful ways, effort must be made to lower existing barriers. To clear these barriers requires constant and effective efforts…it is essential that partnerships are formed among and between key players in the school, business and other communities,” the authors of Last Best Chance 2004 warned. Now just three years later: Reaching One’s Potential for Excellence Scholars Program. Somewhere between the release of Last Best Chance 2004 and the passage of the ROPE Scholars Program a system was created through which information passes fluidly across partnerships. 

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