Entering her third year as North Carolina’s leader of K-12 education, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt is sharpening her signature strategic plan, Operation Polaris, with new focus areas while continuing to press for progress along a number of key fronts, from pandemic recovery to strengthening student literacy.
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Students in early elementary grades in North Carolina public schools continue to show gains in literacy skills, according to results of a key assessment administered at the beginning of the current school year.
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) was recently awarded roughly $17 million in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Education to help meet the mental health needs of students in the state’s public schools. The funding will enable NCDPI to leverage partnerships with institutions of higher education and 15 school districts to increase the number and diversity of mental health service providers in high-needs schools. Starting this month and continuing through 2027, these grants will help the state bolster the pipeline of school-based mental health service providers, including school counselors, school social workers and school mental health clinicians
When Jessica Barnette gathered her kindergarten and first-grade students this morning to walk to Rocky Point Elementary’s multi-purpose room, she thought they were attending a preview of the school’s winter concert. She must have been a bit puzzled by the presence of the district superintendent and several unfamiliar adults. After all, the big event was the following evening.
A dozen North Carolina school districts and one charter school will benefit this year from a total of $800,000 in grants aimed at developing student skills in computer science through coding. The Coding and Mobile App Development Grant program, launched in 2017 with funding from the General Assembly, supports partnerships with local businesses to help schools develop computer science, coding and mobile app development programs for middle and high school students.
Progress continues for the advisory group of school leaders who convened again today for the third time to discuss revising the state’s unpopular A-F school performance grading model. During today’s meeting, members split into groups to consider alternative indicators, academic and non-academic, that could be included in a final model to better measure school quality.
Two hundred school districts and charter schools across North Carolina will benefit from more than $74.1 million in school safety grants announced today by the Department of Public Instruction’s Center for Safer Schools.
North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS), operating under the governance of the N.C. State Board of Education, has been honored for high quality online learning from an international organization that focuses on quality assurance of digital teaching and learning offered by higher education and K-12 schools.
North Carolina’s performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress given during the 2021-22 school year to fourth and eighth graders generally mirrored a national decline in reading and math skills as schools everywhere were beginning to recover ground lost to the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A recent statewide survey about how North Carolina public school performance is graded drew more than 26,000 participants, most of whom said that the current A-F grading system needs to be revised to give more weight to student growth and to include more non-academic criteria.
An initiative led by the N.C Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to define the skills and mindsets students need for success after high school has been unfolding since March. Now, with the help of 1,200 North Carolinians across the state, this grassroots-informed Portrait of a Graduate has been finalized.
The N.C. Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) and North Carolina Collaboratory are leading a joint $6.73 million effort to spur research on the impact of COVID-19 on student learning in the state, with the goal of helping educators and students recover from pandemic-related disruptions and lost instructional time.
The State Board of Education approved a new policy today aimed at boosting opportunities for high school students to enroll and succeed in community college courses under the state’s decade-old Career and College Promise program.
A record-setting 232 elementary schools across North Carolina have been selected and approved by the State Board of Education to participate in the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program for the 2022-23 school year. This is North Carolina’s largest number of schools ever to participate in a given school year. Every school that applied was selected and approved to participate.
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) is beginning a process to overhaul school performance grades and is seeking public input through a new survey. The state’s A-F performance grades were developed so communities could better understand the quality of North Carolina’s public schools, but a growing consensus has led many to believe that the current model does not accurately reflect all aspects of school quality because it puts too much weight on student achievement as determined by high-stakes testing.
Nine North Carolina school districts stretching from Hyde County in the east to Cherokee County in the west will share more than $300 million in new state lottery-funded grant awards for school construction, renovation projects, and other capital improvements.
Five North Carolina public schools were named National Blue Ribbon Schools for 2022 today by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. The five schools are among 297 schools nationwide recognized this year for their overall academic performance or progress in closing achievement gaps.
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has been awarded a $1.1 million federal grant to develop an assessment system to support multilingual learners – also known as English language learners – in third through fifth grades.
North Carolina students improved their performance on state tests during the 2021-22 school year from the previous year’s COVID steep decline, and schools achieved growth almost on par with pre-pandemic levels, according to the state’s accountability report presented today to the State Board of Education.
North Carolina’s youngest students made strong gains in early literacy skills during the 2021-22 school year, outpacing the performance of students in other states where the same assessment is used to measure student progress throughout the year.