The national Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (CGLR) is recognizing four North Carolina communities for measurable progress on key indicators of early school success.  Read Charlotte in Mecklenburg County; Chatham Reads in Chatham County; Growing Moore Readers of Moore County and WAKE Up and Read in Wake County reported progress in 2017 for children from low-income families toward at least one CGLR indicator: school readiness, school attendance or summer learning.

WakeEd Partnership is pleased to present the first class of Coach Bob Pittard Scholars. Mr. Pittard was a former teacher and graduate from Wake County Public Schools who left in his will financial capabilities and direction to establish a sustainable college scholarship fund for student athletes in Apex, North Carolina.

While participating in WakeEd’s SummerSTEM program, Mrs. Sautro and Mrs. Rhyne from Weatherstone Elementary School were embedded in leading STEM companies and received coaching in the implementation of project-based learning.

This past July, Teresa Pierre led our SummerSTEM group to Red Hat, where we were immediately hooked by the presentation about their work process. I cannot imagine where else I would have been exposed to the Agile-based work management system called Scrum; yet, in the business world, it is practiced every day in many fields. The appeal of bringing this process to our school hit me, but was problematic to implement; changing the culture of a school is not a job for a few personnel alone.

The disappointing news last week that the state’s overall reading proficiency of fourth graders has dropped since the start of the Read to Achieve law reveals some major flaws with that program, and it’s not with the teachers.