Parents in Wake County have a wealth of options for public school choice within the Wake County Public School System through the magnet school program that has been a cornerstone of the school system for more than 35 years. WCPSS has over 50 magnet schools across its K-12 continuum, and they are designed to achieve …
Public School Choice Can Be Found in WCPSS Magnet Schools Read More »
Of the many changes that occurred with the shift to teaching Common Core State Standards perhaps the most noticeable to students, parents, and teachers alike was the move away from using textbooks in English Language Arts and Mathematics. It wasn’t by design that textbooks went away, but it is by design that Wake County Public …
North Carolina is at an important crossroads in how it pays for its K-12 public schools, and dramatic change may be on the horizon. The 2017-19 state budget that was signed into law last month created a special legislative committee, known as the Joint Legislative Task Force on Education Finance Reform, to study the way …
Moving to A Weighted Student Formula for Public School Funding Makes Sense Read More »
The traditional school year is over once again without teachers knowing what their salaries will be next year. It’s not uncommon that the state budget bill, which sets spending priorities for the next two years, isn’t completed before the end of the school year, but until recently it used to be uncommon that public school …
Dump the National Average Salary and Properly Value the Teaching Profession Read More »
What, really, is the point of a school performance report? This is the question that hasn’t been answered in the discussion about school accountability. Is it to measure the teaching quality so parents know if their child’s school is really a good school? Or is it a self-assessment measure for schools to look at their …
Finding the Right Formula for A Useful School Performance Report Read More »
It’s official. No one can agree on the best time to start the school year. A recent report from the NC General Assembly’s Program Evaluation Division (PED) found that certain start dates are favored more than others, but none poll at a rate high enough to say with certainty that one is the best. Different …
The conventional wisdom on K-3 class size is that smaller is better. That was the thinking used when the General Assembly passed its budget last year with a section that limited class sizes for grades K-3 starting with the 2017-18 school year. But like any conventional wisdom, there’s caveats and unintended consequences. Despite the criticism …
The North Carolina School Report Cards program was broken from the start, and now the state has a chance to change it for the better. The question is: Who’s going to do it? The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is drafting a plan to measure student outcomes under new federal regulations which do not match …
NC Needs to Adopt a Unified, Comprehensive School Accountability Standard Read More »
As the North Carolina General Assembly opens its long session on January 25, WakeEd Partnership has released its Public Policy Agenda (PDF) with an emphasis on teacher talent management, improving school accountability measures, and ensuring student equity for all. The document is organized under three main topics: Properly Value the Teaching Profession, Align Academic Standards …
WakeEd’s Public Policy Agenda Focus: Teachers, Standards, Students Read More »
The results from an international test of 15-year-olds show that North Carolina students are competitive with worldwide peers in reading and science, but lag significantly in mathematics. Administered every three years, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide benchmark of national education systems. In the 2015 test, students from North Carolina, Massachusetts, …
PISA Results: NC Schools Perform Well, But Show Plenty of Room to Grow Read More »
