As the question about class size requirements in grades K-3 lingers, the Wake County Public School System is preparing to add about 460 new elementary classroom teaching positions. How the school system reaches that number is possible through several different scenarios, according to Superintendent James Merrill. He presented multiple options to restructure the school system …
WCPSS Considers Its Class Size Reduction Options 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 »
Wake County Public School System is one of the lucky ones when it comes to absorbing the impact of the General Assembly’s action on reduced class size in grades K-3, but it is going to cost the taxpayers more. Superintendent Jim Merrill told the Wake County School Board that his budget request includes an additional …
Reduced class size adds $13 million to $56.6 million WCPSS budget increase request 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 NC Teaching Fellows are back, sort of. Leaders in the House and Senate released a plan on March 9 to offer forgivable loans to college students who become STEM or special education teachers. The plan revives a successful program that the General Assembly ended a few years ago. The fellows would be eligible for …
Teaching Fellows Revival Proposed for STEM, Special Ed. Read More »
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 »
Big changes could be coming to North Carolina’s educational funding system. A recent study presented to the Joint Legislative Program Evaluation and Oversight Committee revealed inequities in the current funding formulas and made suggestions for entirely new ways to allocate money to the local school districts. This has the potential to be the biggest change in …
State School Funding Changes Could Be on the Horizon Read More »
The path to a new formula for paying school-based administrators is proving to be hard to find. At its first meeting in October, the Joint Legislative Study Committee on School-Based Administrator Pay reviewed a proposal to eliminate the current complicated salary schedule for school principals and the insufficient salary schedule for assistant principals in favor …
The initial plan to restructure the way school principals are paid in North Carolina calls for an end of the complicated pay scale. In its place, lawmakers propose giving superintendents the power to negotiate salaries with principals, and to provide performance bonuses. Lawmakers from the Joint Legislative Study Committee on School-Based Administrator Pay presented a …
