State Board of Education
Strategic Plan to Guide Its Work
State Board of Education
members have set important goals for the next three years. The following goals
are for 2017-18, with incremental improvements expected in the
preceding two years:
• a four year high school cohort graduation
rate of more than 90 percent;
• approximately 80 percent of high school
juniors scoring at or above the minimum UNC ACT score requirement of 17;
• Career and Technical Education students
earning 151,900 or more industry credentials;
• reducing the percentage of graduates who need
remediation in the UNC system during their freshman year to 2 percent; and
• increasing access to effective and highly
effective teachers for students in low-achieving and high-poverty schools.
The Board’s strategic
plan focuses on:
• Every student graduating from high school
prepared for work, further education and citizenship.
• Every student having a personalized
education.
• Every student, every day having excellent
educators.
• Every school district having up-to-date
financial, business and technology systems to serve students, parents and
educators.
• Every student healthy, safe and responsible.
The Board’s full plan and
its objectives and measures are available online.
NCVPS Annual Report
Shows Participation Growth Trend
North Carolina’s Virtual
Public School (NCVPS) has been offering online courses for students across the
state since 2007. In 2014-15, 35,966 students enrolled in at least one online
course through NCVPS, and there were a total of 55,817 course enrollments. This
represents an increase from 17,326 student enrollments in 2007-08.
NCVPS enables
students to take courses that may not ordinarily be offered in their local
brick-and-mortar school or during times that are more convenient for their
schedules. These virtual courses are offered through local school districts at
no charge to public school and public charter school students or their families.
Courses offered through
the NCVPS range from credit recovery to Advanced Placement (AP) courses. One
special component of the NCVPS is its Occupational Course of Study blended
courses for students with disabilities. Education
Week called the NCVPS Occupational Course of Study (OCS) Blended Learning
approach of partnering licensed special education teachers and subject matter
experts “the gold standard of courses for special education students.”
NCVPS
offers more than 150 courses, including 15 AP courses, 16 world languages, 10
OCS courses and 12 arts courses.
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 Funding Available for
Stop-arm Cameras
Motorists in North
Carolina routinely and illegally pass stopped school buses, according to the
annual stop-arm violations count, which shows that more than 3,000 vehicles daily
will illegally
pass a school bus with its red lights flashing and stop sign extended,
according to figures from the state's annual one day stop-arm
count.
Since 1998, 13 North Carolina students have been killed in such
incidents. State law allows video evidence to be used in prosecuting these
offenses. Placing stop-arm cameras
on buses can help address this safety issue by raising awareness and providing
local law enforcement with evidence to prosecute motorists who illegally pass a
stopped school bus.
This month, the State
Board of Education approved a funding formula to distribute $690,000 in state
funds to local school districts for installing stop-arm cameras. Only school
districts that are reporting violations through the North Carolina State
University data-gathering instrument will be eligible, unless the district
submits a statement indicating why submitting data has not been possible.
Priority will be given to districts with a lower percentage of the school bus
fleet currently equipped with stop-arm camera systems.
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Students Retained Twice
to Receive Out-of-School Tutoring
School districts will
now have funding to provide out-of-school tutoring for elementary school students
who have been retained twice and are not on track with their peers for grade
level reading proficiency under the Read to Achieve legislative requirement.
Funds will now be
provided to support tutoring for these students in an effort to bring them to
grade-level proficiency. The funding allotment is based on three hours of tutoring per week per
student at $40 an hour or $120 per student, per week. PowerSchool records
indicate that there are 391 students who have been retained twice under the
requirements set out in legislation. These students began third grade in the
2013-14 school year and are currently in a transition or fourth grade
accelerated class. Funding will be distributed to the LEAs/charters according
to the student designation in PowerSchool.
The Read to Achieve legislative requirements began statewide in North
Carolina in the 2013-14 school year. The current school year, 2015-16, is the
first year in which students could meet the legislative requirement to become
eligible for supplemental tutoring.
 Special Recognitions
Mathematics and Science Awards
Each year, the top
mathematics and science teachers in each state are recognized through the
Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. State
winners receive $10,000 and a trip to Washington D.C. to attend the National
Awards Recognition program.
This month, the 2013
Presidential Awardee in Mathematics, Julie Riggins of East Forsyth High School
(Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools) was honored. Also, North Carolina’s 2015
finalists for the Presidential Awards in Mathematics were recognized: Lauren
Baucom, Forest Hills High School (Union County Schools), Maureen Fitzsimmons,
Mooresville Middle School (Mooresville Graded Schools) and Sara Vaughn,
Northwest Middle School (Winston-Salem/Forsyth Schools).
The 2015 North Carolina
Presidential Awards finalists in Science are Jonathan Bennett, North Carolina
School of Science and Mathematics (Durham), Ronda Champion, Crest High School (Cleveland
County Schools), Amanda Class, Smoky Mountain High School (Jackson County
Schools), and Karen Newman, Durham Academy (Durham).
America’s Best School Bus Inspector
Local school districts
employ school bus inspectors to ensure that the school buses transporting
students each day are in good shape. The National Association for Pupil
Transportation holds an annual competition to recognize excellence in school
bus inspections, and this year, North Carolina’s top school bus inspector also
won the national competition as well. Dustin Wells, school bus inspector for
Pitt County Schools, earned this national recognition and was honored at the
December Board meeting.
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