State Board Approves Nominees to Two Key Education Stakeholder Councils

The State Board of Education at its June meeting approved nominees to serve on the State Advisory Council on Indian Education and the Council on Educational Services for Exceptional Children.

The State Advisory Council on Indian Education (SACIE) serves a vital role in advising the State Board of Education on issues pertaining to the education of American Indian students.  As legislatively mandated, council membership is determined based on recommendations from the NC Commission of Indian Affairs Board, with review and final approval of all nominees by the State Board of Education. 

The 15-member council includes five American Indian parents of students in the state’s K-12 public schools and five American Indian public-school educators. Nominees are endorsed and recommended by the state’s Commission on Indian Affairs.

Indian members of the council are broadly representative of North Carolina Indian tribes and organizations, specifically, the Eastern Band of Cherokee, Lumbee, Coharie, Waccamaw-Siouan, Haliwa Saponi, Meherrin, Person County Indians, Cumberland County Association for Indian People, the Guilford Native American Association, the Metrolina Native American Association, and any other Indian tribe graining state recognition in the future.

Four new nominees and one member returning for a second term were approved by the State Board of Education:

• Calvin Locklear, parent, Triangle Native American Society
• Stacey Lynch, parent, Haliwa Saponi tribe
• Angelique Young, educator, Coharie tribe
• Jeremiah Moore, educator, Lumbee tribe
• Rodney Jackson, educator, Lumbee tribe, returning for a second term

The board also approved two members of the state’s Council on Educational Services for Exceptional Children. Both were appointed to the council by Gov. Roy Cooper, who designates two members of the council, which must include at least 24 individuals representing various interest in the education of children with disabilities. A majority of the members of the council must be individuals with disabilities or parents of children with disabilities, and 14 members are appointed by the State Board of Education.

The duties of the council include advising the State Board with respect to a range of issues related to the education of children with disabilities.

The board endorsed the reappointment of Matthew Potter, from Forsyth County, and the new appointment of Linda McDonough, of Chapel Hill, as a representative of a private school.

Board Hears Update on Learning Challenges Related to COVID-19 Pandemic

A new report presented to the State Board this month from DPI’s Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration (OLR) estimates how many months students needed to catch up at the end of the 2020-21 school year because of learning disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The report, part of a “Research and Recovery Round Up” white paper series from the OLR, expands on an earlier analysis, released in March, that measured learning losses by more abstract effect sizes. The translation of those effect sizes into months is intended to make the information more accessible and useful for educators in schools across the state as well as to broader audiences.

“North Carolina has really emerged as a national leader in the work of recovery because of the Office of Learning Recover and Acceleration,” Jeni Corn, director of research in the OLR, told the board. “There is a single group of staff and researchers focused on this work on behalf of the department – working with all the divisions and areas inside the agency and also doing a great deal of outreach to our charter and LEA leadership.”

Corn said the intent of the OLR is to be transparent, to facilitate partnerships and to coordinate the work between DPI and districts and charters to ensure that federal COVID relief funds (ESSER) are applied most effectively in support of optimal teaching and learning.

Calen Clifton, a research analyst in the OLR, said the latest report – quantifying lost learning time at the end of the 2020-21 school year by subject and grade level – said the new information is aimed at “helping audiences understand the magnitude of students need and to facilitate meaningful, recovery focused dialogue between all members of the community.”

The report notes that although schools were operational throughout the 2020-21 school year, student growth was negatively impacted by the disruptions to learning compared to a “regular” school year. “In some cases,” the report continues, “given the severity and diversity of pandemic-induced challenges, students may now need interventions that accelerate learning experiences beyond the typical instructional time during an academic school year.”

The report’s estimated additional school months necessary for recovery range widely, from just two and a quarter months in 3^rd grade English Language Arts to 15 and a quarter months in Math 1.

Corn told the board that school leaders and educators need to focus on how they can best bridge such gaps in learning.

“We’re trying to get people to think about how they can identify evidence-based interventions that help students make up some of those effects, based on the particular intervention,” Corn said.

During the summer, she said, the OLR will be supporting districts and schools as they roll out summer programs designed to help students catch up. In July, she said, district and charter leaders are invited to participate in a strategic planning event, in partnership with SAS Institute’s EVAAS team, to delve into the data on their individual districts and schools and identify evidence-based practices as interventions for learning recovery.

Teachers Signal Desire to be Heard with Record Response to Statewide Job Survey

Facing continuing challenges this school year related to the COVID-19 pandemic, North Carolina teachers showed high levels of concern on several issues with a record-setting response rate on the latest NC Teacher Working Conditions Survey presented to the State Board of Education during its June meeting.

Still, with a response rate of nearly 92 percent on the long-running survey, the percentage of teachers agreeing with the statement that their school “is a good place to work and learn” remained high, at 85%, down only two points from the last two surveys from 2020 and 2018. Since 2002, the survey has been given every two years to all educators in the state’s public K-12 schools.

“Teachers definitely wanted to have their voices heard,” Alessandro Montanari, assistant director of District and Regional Support, told the board. “Our educators really want to help us make decisions.”

In all, more than 112,000 of the 122,000 educators who were potential participants in the survey responded, with 98% of traditional and charter schools meeting a minimum threshold of at least 40% participation to generate usable data, which schools and districts apply as a part of their ongoing improvement planning. A total of 2,690 schools participated in the survey.

On an item related to potential attrition, 86% of teachers indicated that they plan to remain teaching in North Carolina.

The survey is a statistically valid and reliable instrument to assess whether educators have working conditions in their school that support effective teaching. Teachers, school administrators and other school-level educators are asked about their levels of agreement with statements focusing on 10 key areas:

• Use of time
• Community support and involvement
• Facilities and resources
• Managing student conduct
• Teacher leadership
• School leadership
• Professional development
• Instructional practices and support
• Equity
• Safety

In addition, this year’s survey included questions designed to gauge the perceptions of educators about issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On a question about students’ needs for social-emotional or mental-health support compared to a typical year, 29% of educators agreed that students’ needs were “somewhat more than before” and 40% agreed that those needs were “much more than before.”

Also related to the pandemic, educators were asked to select the top five issues of most concern at the time they took the survey. Their responses: addressing disparities in student learning (24%); school staffing shortages (15%); assessing student performance and needs (13%); social emotional support for students (12%); health and safety of teachers and staff (9%).

Among all the questions asked on the survey, the highest rates of agreement pertained to several related to safety. For example, 96% of educators agreed with the statement: “Teachers in this school know what to do if there is an emergency, natural disaster (tornado, flood) or a dangerous situation (e.g., violent person on campus) during the school day.) The same rate of agreement also applied to a question about a school’s written plan in the event of a natural disaster, while 95% agreed that their school has a plan and procedures in place for responding to an active shooter or lock-down situations.

On survey items related to instructional practices and supports, educators registered high rates of agreement on teachers’ use of digital content and resources (95%), curriculum alignment with the N.C. Standard Course of Study, teachers requiring students to work hard (93%) and teachers use of assessment data to inform their instruction (90%).

Lower rates of agreement were found on questions about the sufficiency of non-instructional time for teachers, professional development opportunities tailored to teachers’ individual needs, reasonable class sizes and the frequency of bullying among students.

See highlights from the 2022 survey.

More information about this year's survey as well as results from previous years is available at nctwcs.org