Rooted in Growth Special Edition: Promising Practices Repository Launch
New from the Golden LEAF Schools Initiative (GLSI): The GLSI Promising Practices Repository
Across the GLSI, rural schools are testing ideas, refining implementation, solving persistent challenges, and building stronger systems for teaching and learning. Now, we want to make it easier for educators across North Carolina to learn from that work.
We are excited to announce the launch of the GLSI Promising Practices Repository — a growing collection of practices emerging from GLSI schools that demonstrate promising results, offer practical lessons for implementation, and have the potential to inform the work of other schools and districts both internal and external to the GLSI cohorts.
The repository reflects a central principle of the GLSI: innovation becomes more valuable when what we learn can be captured, studied, shared, and adapted by others. Promising practices are vetted for specificity, evidence, replicability, and alignment to GLSI outcomes, Marzano’s High Reliability Schools (HRS) indicators, or NCDPI strategic priorities.
Each GLSI Promising Practice examines how the practice was implemented, what evidence suggests it is making a difference, what challenges educators encountered, how the work connects to existing research and evidence, and what other schools or districts should consider if they want to adapt or replicate it.
In this special edition of Rooted in Growth, we provide an overview and access to the GLSI Promising Practices Repository, share the two inaugural GLSI Promising Practices, and provide information on how to submit Promising Practices for consideration.
The GLSI Promising Practice Repository
Supporting North Carolina's Priorities for Educational Excellence
North Carolina is entering an important period of investment and innovation in public education. The recently enacted 2026 Appropriations Act (SL 2026-41) establishes several initiatives focused on strengthening how students learn, how educators understand and respond to student mastery, and how schools are supported to implement high-quality instruction. At the same time, NCDPI's Achieving Educational Excellence strategic plan establishes a broader vision for ensuring students have access to excellent educators, rigorous and relevant learning experiences, and learning environments that position them for success. The launch and implementation of the GLSI was one of the first actions launched in the strategic plan under Pillar One, Focus Area 2: Implement the Golden LEAF Schools Initiative through cross-agency collaboration to transform educator practice and student outcomes in rural schools, focusing on high-quality mathematics instruction via the High Reliability Schools Model.
Together these priorities reinforce a central challenge for educational improvement: equipping schools with the necessary capacity, resources, professional learning, and opportunities to learn from one another that allow promising ideas to translate into stronger educational practice.
Several priorities established in the 2026 Appropriations Act closely intersect with work already underway through the GLSI:
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Competency-Based Education (CBE): The legislation launches several initiatives, including a CBE Innovation Grant program that support personalized learning pathways, educator capacity building, innovative formative and performance-based assessment, and opportunities to share implementation lessons and scale effective practices. GLSI's Personalized, Competency Based Education (PCBE) schools are already building school-level systems that personalize learning and support progression based on demonstrated mastery.
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Proficiency scales and standards alignment: The legislation supports the development and implementation of publicly available proficiency scales across content areas and grade levels. GLSI schools are learning how proficiency scales can translate standards into clearer learning expectations and progressions that inform instruction, assessment, intervention, and students' understanding of their own learning. Swain County Middle School's inaugural Promising Practice featured in this issue provides one example of that work in action.
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High-quality K-8 mathematics instruction: The legislation places significant emphasis on mathematics improvement in low-performing K-8 schools, including high-quality instructional materials (HQIM), intervention resources, universal screening, and educator capacity. Mathematics is also a core component of GLSI, including the 10 Transformative Schools currently in Year 2 of HQIM implementation and professional learning.
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Implementation capacity and professional learning: Across these priorities is the recognition that sustainable improvement requires professional learning, coaching, leadership capacity, data-informed decision-making, and structures that help educators translate new approaches into daily practice. This same emphasis on implementation is central to the GLSI school and district support model.
The GLSI Promising Practices Repository is designed to turn local innovation into shared learning by identifying what is working in rural schools, examining the evidence behind it, documenting what educators are learning through implementation, and making those lessons accessible to others.
As North Carolina continues investing in mathematics improvement, high-quality instructional materials, competency-based education, and other innovative approaches to teaching and learning, GLSI's rural schools can contribute examples of success and implementation knowledge to support others. This repository is meant to contribute to both the implementation of emerging state priorities and the larger vision of the NCDPI strategic plan: making North Carolina's public schools the best in nation by 2030.
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Announcing the GLSI Inaugural Promising Practices
To launch the Promising Practices Repository, we selected two inaugural Promising Practices that demonstrate the breadth of innovation occurring across GLSI.
Promising Practice #1: West Lee Middle School
How 30 Minutes of Freedom Build a Culture of Trust and Responsibility
Lee County Schools - Transformative Schools (TS) Cohort
What might happen if middle school students were given more freedom — rather than less?
At West Lee Middle School (WLMS), Principal Aimee Petrarca and her team created Pride Time, an "open campus" period of up to 30 minutes each morning during which students can choose their activity, location, and company.
The premise is straightforward but powerful: responsibility has to be practiced, not simply taught.
The practice followed a year of conversations with students about respect, responsibility, and earning privileges. Today, phones are prohibited during Pride Time, and the entire staff participates in supervision, creating daily opportunities for informal relationship-building.
West Lee reports increased student independence and face-to-face interaction, strong staff buy-in, enthusiasm from students and families, and an increase from 41.18% in 2024 to 92.11% in 2026 in teacher agreement that their school is a good place to work and learn on the NC Teacher Working Conditions Survey.
Read West Lee Middle's Full Promising Practice
Promising Practice #2: Swain County Middle School
"Cutting the Noise" with Proficiency Scales
Swain County Schools - Personalized, Competency-Based Education (PCBE) Cohort
At Swain County Middle School (SCMS), proficiency scales are becoming a tool for creating clarity about exactly what students need to learn across grade levels and content areas.
During Year 1, SCMS focused on moving proficiency scales from an abstract concept to a practical classroom tool. The school coupled that work with strategic staffing, standards trackers, EVAAS projections, teacher collaboration and redesigned intervention structures.
School leaders report significant improvements in iReady mathematics scores across all grade levels, approximately 90% staff buy-in, early evidence of students beginning to articulate their own proficiency, and a coordinated schoolwide approach to intervention.
Read Swain Middle's Full Promising Practice
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Have a Promising Practice to Share?
The repository will continue to grow throughout the school year. Promising Practices may be submitted by GLSI schools or districts on a rolling basis and will be selected and published at least quarterly.
Teachers, instructional coaches, principals, implementation team members, district implementation coordinators, and superintendents may submit practices for consideration.
Have a Question?
Contact a Member of Our Team
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Rachel Wright Junio, Director: rachel.wrightjunio@dpi.nc.gov
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Jay Johnson, Project Manager: jay.johnson@dpi.nc.gov
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Cole Smith, Data and Evaluation Specialist: cole.smith@dpi.nc.gov
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Dr. Toni Witherow, Leadership Coach: toni.witherow@dpi.nc.gov
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Betsy Hicks, Assessment Coach: elizabeth.hicks@dpi.nc.gov
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