This
week, State Board of Education members will discuss for a second month policy
changes to teacher evaluation and licensure policies. The goal is to streamline
these so that they will help broaden your teacher recruitment pool and to
eliminate Standards 6 (teachers) and 8 (principals) as stand-alone parts of the
evaluation process while still maintaining a focus on student growth.
As a
reminder, these policy
revisions were presented to you at the December Superintendents’
meeting, discussed at the Board follow-up webinar on Feb. 8, and will be up for
a vote by the Board in April.
We are
having another State Board of Education meeting follow-up webinar
on Monday, March 7, at 1:30 p.m. Please participate in this webinar to provide
us with feedback to these proposed policy changes. We hope to have feedback from a larger
group to share with Board members.
You
also have the opportunity to provide written feedback through Let’s Talk. Simply
go to the Department’s website and
click on the Let’s Talk icon then select Education Policy Feedback as your
topic. Your comments will come directly to my office.
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 State Board of Education Meets
this Week
The State Board of Education meets this Wednesday and Thursday, March
2-3, in the 7th Floor Board Room, Education Building, Raleigh.
The Board’s action agenda includes reform for continuously low-performing
schools, the 2016 Invitation to Submit Textbooks for Adoption in K-12 Social
Studies and Healthful Living, a report to the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee on NCVPS Alternative
Funding Formula, and the Board’s 2016-17 Supplemental Budget recommendations.
Discussion items include a history of student surveys under the Board’s Issues
Session, proposed conceptual policy recommendations related to licensure and
policies on general licensure requirements, a report on Incidents of Seclusion and Restraint, the Healthy Active Children Annual Report, high school accreditation,
and academic standards review and revision.
On Thursday, the Board will receive
the 2014-15 Consolidated Data Report, which contains information on reportable student
crimes, suspensions and expulsions, use of corporal punishment, and
dropout data.
The complete agenda
as well as supporting executive summaries are available online by clicking on the SBE Meetings tab. The meeting is
audio streamed for those who cannot attend. To listen, please visit the above
link and click on the live audio streams link to the right.
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NCDPI Joins National #GoOpen Initiative
North
Carolina – #GoOpenNC – will
join an inaugural cohort of more than a dozen states that are committed to
supporting school districts and educators by promoting the use of high quality,
openly licensed educational resources.
North
Carolina is being recognized for its leadership by the U.S. Department of
Education at the #GoOpen Exchange, a gathering of state and district leaders,
innovative education technology platform providers, and non-profit
organizations working together to share knowledge and experiences to help
educators transition to using openly licensed educational resources.
NC Teacher Working
Conditions Survey Opens Tomorrow
School-based
licensed educators in all 115 North Carolina school districts and charter
schools will have an opportunity to answer a variety of questions on the 8th
biennial statewide NC Teacher Working Conditions (TWC) Survey, which is open March
1-25.
The NC TWC Survey
gathers feedback from teachers, counselors, principals and other administrators
about the adequacy of school facilities and resources, time, empowerment,
school leadership, community support, student conduct, professional
development, mentoring and induction services, and student learning. The
web-based survey is voluntary, anonymous and confidential.
As
in past years, educators will receive unique access codes from their designated
school-based representative (Teacher of the Year, NCAE Representative, Teacher
Leader) that enable them to take the survey at the NC
TWC website.
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 NCVPS Summer School 2016
This is a good time to
start planning for Summer School 2016. The NCVPS summer session begins on
June 20 and ends on Aug. 12. Each enrolling district will need to supply NCVPS
with its summer contacts. This is essential for NCVPS teachers. Some
districts will choose to have just one contact for summer. Other districts will
have a contact for each school. NCVPS staff will survey districts in April for
their summer contact information.
Please note that NCVPS
registration for the 2016-17 academic year will happen in PowerSchool. The
current NCVPS registration system will be shut down.
Keep in mind that
PowerSchool will not track allotment usage like the current registration system
does. Districts will need to calculate and track their own allotment usage.
There are three costs for courses, so an allotment usage spreadsheet might look
something like the table below. Look for more details in
March and April.
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