New Year brings new initiatives for NCNSP
 | Tony Habit
NCNSP President
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With the start of the New Year, we at the North Carolina New Schools Project are engaged in several new initiatives that we believe hold real promise for continued progress on the state's critical goal of ensuring that all students graduate with the skills to succeed. North Carolina must do all it can to deliver on that goal. It's essential to the state's economic development and quality of life. The innovative new high schools that we have helped launch and support during the last seven years, in partnership with local districts, the State Board of Education, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction and others, continue to demonstrate that all students can achieve when expectations are high, teaching and learning is rigorous and engaging, and support for students is strong.
Now it's time to expand the reach of those important lessons to more districts and schools across the state so that more students can benefit.
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Leaders help plan for scaling up innovation
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 | Former Gov. Jim Hunt and Michele Cahill of Carnegie Corporation
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Leaders of education, business and government met last week to tackle a big challenge: How to strengthen and scale up the kinds of innovation underway in a growing number of North Carolina secondary schools aimed at ensuring that all students graduate with the skills needed to succeed in college, careers and life.
The daylong forum, opened by former Gov. Jim Hunt, launched a planning effort by the North Carolina New Schools Project to map out a strategy for helping to transform schools and districts around a common goal of strong preparation for all students, supported by powerful teaching and learning and high expectations for all.
"I want you to make these changes happen," Hunt urged the forum participants. "We've got to go all the way."
The meeting was co-sponsored by Carnegie Corporation of New York, which is helping lead efforts nationally to strengthen education in science and mathematics. Michele Cahill, vice president for national programs and director of urban education for Carnegie, told the group that sweeping changes in the economy demand transformation of schools and the educational system.
"The futures of young people are tied more to their education than ever before," Cahill said. "Most of the jobs being created not only require greater levels of postsecondary education but also the kind of knowledge that comes from STEM education."
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STEM teacher prep program wins approval
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 College graduates interested in becoming high school science, math and technology teachers now have a new option for certification. The State Board of Education approved the North Carolina New Schools Project's STEM Teacher Education Program (STEP) this month and applications are now available for the lateral-entry teacher certification program.
An initiative of NCNSP, the non-traditional teacher education program is supported by the federal Transition to Teaching grant program, which supports efforts to recruit and retain highly qualified mid-career professionals and recent college graduates interested in earning a teaching license through an alternative route.
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Good teaching leads to better life outcomes
A no-brainer, right? But economists from Harvard and Columbia universities now have found hard evidence linking teaching quality to long-term positive outcomes of students.
The three economists tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years from elementary school into adulthood and found that the students with the most effective teachers -- measured by the standardized test scores of their students -- were more likely to lead more successful lives. They had lower rates of teen pregnancy, were more likely to enroll in college and earned higher incomes.
Not surprisingly, the study is attracting attention in current debates about the use of "value-added" measures of teaching quality. But leaving that controversy aside, the study findings nonetheless underscore the importance of good teachers and effective teaching. There's really no substitute.
A recent item by Marc Tucker in The Atlantic magazine makes a similar connection to teaching quality by comparing the United States to top-performing nations such as Finland and South Korea.
"The top-performing nations boost the quality of their teaching forces by greatly raising entry standards for teacher education programs," Tucker writes. "They insist that all teachers have in-depth knowledge of the subjects they will teach, apprenticing new teachers to master teachers and raising teacher pay to that of other high-status professions. They then encourage these highly trained teachers to take the lead in improving classroom practices."
NCNSP believes that teacher quality and teaching effectiveness are at the heart of educational transformation for schools and districts. There's really no substitute. |
