Board Focuses on Key Issues During Charlotte Planning and Work Session
The State Board of Education focused on a broad range of key issues and challenges for North Carolina’s public schools during a two-day planning and work session this month held at UNC Charlotte.
Discussions and presentations during the twice-yearly meeting were oriented to the board’s strategic goals, which have been advanced from 2025 to 2027 because of disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The board has set these goals for the state to achieve by 2027:
- Eliminate opportunity gaps between students by 2027
- Improve school and district performance by 2027
- Increase educator preparedness to meet the needs of every child by 2027
Within those overarching goals, the board addressed several specific objectives during this month’s meeting by examining recent data on student performance and a key indicators of school performance from the board’s newly developed NC Strategic Dashboard Monitoring Tool.
The board also received updates on several initiatives underway by the Department of Public Instruction, including a proposed overhaul of the state’s school performance grades model, the Portrait of a Graduate and efforts to improve school safety while reducing exclusionary discipline practices in schools across the state.
Board member James Ford, chair of the board’s Strategic Planning Committee, told the other members that such sessions are especially productive for the board’s work.
“I think we set a precedent and culture of working across lines of difference, being critical friends to each other, and finding ways to adhere to the mission and the mantle of the State Board of Education,” Ford said.
Education Preparation
Related to its goal to increase educator preparedness, the board heard a detailed presentation from leaders of the NC Principal Fellows Program, which develops school leaders from the ranks of classroom teachers and other practicing educators working in schools across the state. The program currently works in conjunction with eight educator preparation programs, although both the Sandhills and southeast regions of the state are left unserved.
Board Chair Eric Davis said he was particularly concerned with that void. “Those are parts of our state where we need strong principal leadership, and have some of our most challenged situations,” Davis said. “I hope that concern will be addressed.”
The board also heard a presentation from the Cato College of Education at UNC Charlotte, which has an outsized impact on preparing teachers and school leaders for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and other school districts in that part of the state.
Possible Changes to School Performance Grades
On the development of new indicators to widen the scope of the state’s current test-score-dependent A-F performance grade system for school, board members signaled strong support. Staff from the Department of Public Instruction outlined eight new potential indicators, including such elements as postsecondary outcomes, attainment of durable skills, chronic absenteeism, and school climate. With legislative approval, the agency hopes to pilot the new indicators beginning with the 2024-25 school year.
Deputy State Superintendent Michael Maher said that the eight indicators better “reflect and respect” the work that school leaders and teachers do every day.
“It’s not just about standardized test scores, which is all we really are right now,” Maher said. “This is far more comprehensive when we think about the work of teachers and principals.”
Leah Carper, 2022 Burroughs Wellcome Teacher of the Year and advisor to the board, said teachers would love to have their schools evaluated on additional measures of quality.
“The multiple measures are so important,” Carper said. “The thing is that the [current] performance grade does not tell the whole story of a school. We’re very excited for this work.”
Davis noted that the board had previously supported multiple measures when considering the state’s model for school performance grades as it was setting accountability measures several years ago under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act or ESSA.
He asked if the board would vote on the plan before being considered by the General Assembly.
“We want to make sure that it’s clear to the public how much we support this effort,” Davis said.
School Safety and Student Discipline
On issues of school safety and discipline, Karen Fairley, executive director of the Center for Safer Schools, outlined several steps that the center is taking to broaden its support for schools statewide, including efforts to address mental health concerns and ensuring that school resource officers are doing more to help students rather than only enforcing discipline.
“We want the SROs to look like what they’re supposed to look like,” Fairley said, “and that is people who are there to mentor and encourage young people and not to create a sense of fear. We want to make sure that SROs are in a positive way.”
Lily Seymour, a student advisor to the board, said such efforts are needed.
In her experience, she said, “you never saw your SRO unless there were drug dogs in the school, and things were really bad. And [SROs] were used as sort of like the intimidator to enforce fear when things got pretty intense.”
Several board members said they supported the Center’s new efforts, even while recognizing the potential challenges of gaining traction with all school districts.
“We have to continue to beat on the door,” said Reginald Kenan. “Sooner or later somebody’s going to open the door to get the things we need for our children. We can’t run away from what you have recommended.”
Chair Davis asked Deputy Superintendent Jerry Oates, whose division of District and School Support Services includes the Center, to report to the board with recommendations on further steps it can take.
“Come back to us and tell us what we should do to help superintendents and teachers reduce exclusionary discipline practices and improve student behavior,” Davis said.
After hearing a presentation from Cabarrus County Schools on that district’s initiatives to improve school climate, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt said that a more comprehensive accountability model is a powerful lever for changing school culture.
“The best shot at seeing the change we want is having an accountability model that very clearly lays out what we value in terms of school culture or school climate – as well as all the other things we want to use to measure school quality and student success,” Truitt said. “We all know the system we have now doesn’t do either one of those things.”
Portrait of a Graduate
The board ended its planning and work session with a focus of the Portrait of a Graduate initiative, which has defined seven key competencies or durable skills for students to possess by the time they graduate from high school. The board learned that the initiative continues with the creation of rubrics for each of the skills and a POG Playbook and a micro-site to promote adoption and implementation in the state’s classrooms.
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