The North Carolina New Schools Project - INNOVATOR - September 2012
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September 25, 2012

Welcome to INNOVATOR, an update on secondary school change from North Carolina New Schools. Our newsletter aims to inform practitioners, policy makers, and friends of public education on innovation, research and success stories from secondary schools. Please contact us to provide feedback and suggest article ideas.

Securing their prosperity and ours
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Tony Habit
Tony Habit
President
NC New Schools 
North Carolina's high school class of 2012 set a new high-water mark that deserves repeating: Eight of every 10 students graduated on time. Just four years ago, only seven in 10 members of the class of 2008 reached that all-or-nothing milestone. This comes as a result of hard working teachers and administrators who, despite the pressure placed on families and children during the economic downturn, remain focused on better results for kids.

At NC New Schools we believe that every student deserves to graduate able to provide for themselves and their families and to contribute to their community. This means that real success beyond high school requires the skills and strength to persist and to learn and relearn for a lifetime. Since dropouts confront limited prospects, every student must be equipped for a two- or four-year degree or industry related certification.

But every graduate need not enroll in a four-year college to lead a fulfilling life, support a family and fully participate in civic life. Too many students now begin college to earn a four-year degree, or even a two-year degree, and never finish. A high-profile report issued last year by the Harvard Graduate School of Education challenged the belief in "college for all" with a prescription for creating more options, starting in high school, that lead to productive careers. The report, Pathways to Prosperity, urged a more robust focus on the kind of high-caliber career and technical education that creates more opportunity for students rather than fewer options.

The report draws on examples from Europe for models of vocational education that it says are effective in providing options to students through strong apprenticeship programs or other work-based learning.

The conclusions and prescriptions of the Pathways report are now being applied in several states, including North Carolina, with the goal of increasing the number of students who not only graduate from high school, but who also earn a postsecondary credential that's proof of a marketable skill.

 Read more ... 

More focus on "middle jobs," study urges

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A new study just out picks up on the same message that framed the Pathways to Prosperity report issued in 2011: America needs to focus more attention on postsecondary education that doesn't always aim at a four-year college degree.  
 
The study, from the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University, argues that "middle jobs" -- those requiring more than high school but less than a bachelor's degree -- offer access to middle class wages of at least $35,000 a year and opportunities for advancement. Those jobs account for one of every five jobs in the U.S. economy, the study says, and nearly half of all jobs that pay middle-class wages. In all, "middle jobs" -- which include nurses, mechanics, electricians, office workers and many others -- represent 29 million of the roughly 139 million jobs in the U.S. labor market, the study says.

But the nation should be doing more to strengthen pathways to those jobs, the study's authors argue, largely by strengthening career and technical education with larger investments and closer alignment between secondary and postsecondary programs and with employer-based training programs. At the same time, the study notes, many of those who begin their postsecondary education in a two-year program or to earn an industry-based certification eventually go on to earn a bachelor's degree. 
 
The dramatic economic shifts over that last few decades that have made education past high school essential also means more focus on pathways other than just a four-year degree. 
"Today, high school is designed to prepare students for further learning in school or on the job," the study observes. "The ability to pass on middle-class standing to children depends on giving them a strategic postsecondary educational advantage of some kind." 
Black males more likely to graduate in NC
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Outcomes for black males are improving too slowly , a newly released national report cautions, but it ranks North Carolina as having the highest graduation rate for black males of states with large black enrollments.

The report, The Urgency of Now, estimated the 2010 graduation rate for black males in North Carolina at 58 percent, compared to 52 percent for the nation as a whole. North Carolina's graduation rate was higher than six other states with enrollments of black males exceeding 200,000 in the 2009-10 school year: California (56 percent graduation rate), Texas (53 percent), Georgia (49 percent), Florida (47 percent), Illinois (47 percent), New York (37 percent).

[For the class of 2012, black males had a graduation rate of 68.1 percent, according to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. To allow for comparisons among states, The Urgency of Now report used estimates comparing numbers of graduates with numbers of 9th graders four years earlier. North Carolina tracks individual students to calculate a "cohort" graduation rate.]

North Carolina has made progress since a similar report four years ago put the black male graduation rate for the class of 2006 at 49 percent. The gap between black and white males has narrowed from 19 percentage points to 13 points during the last four years.

The report, from the Schott Foundation for Public Education, warns that the nation is making only slow progress in improving outcomes for both black and Hispanic males, who had a graduation rate nationally of 58 percent and 50 percent in North Carolina.

The gap between black and white male graduation rates nationally has narrowed by only three points over the last 10 years, the report says, from 29 percentage points to 26 points.

"At this rate of progress, with no "large scale" systemic intervention, it would take another 50 years to close the graduation gap between black males and their white male counterparts," Schott President John H. Jackson says in the report.

The report ranks two North Carolina districts -- Cumberland and Guilford counties -- among the top five large districts in the nation for graduation rates for black males. Cumberland's rate for 2010 was 68 percent, according to the report, with a 1-point gap; Guilford's was 67 percent, with a 13-point gap.

Read more ...

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In This Issue
Focus on middle jobs
Black males gain, slowly
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Data snapshot

EOC pass rates 2012
Combined pass rates for 2011-12 school year on three End-of-Course exams in Algebra I, English I and Biology

Source: NC Department of Public Instruction

Worth repeating ...

"We need more education; we need people getting more education; we need people acquiring skills, because you really need that to function in this kind of economy. If you have not done those things, you are going to probably end up classified as poor."
Mike Walden, economist at N.C. State University, quoted by The News & Observer in "Is North Carolina Losing its once-lofty perch?"

"On the up side, the state's spending on higher education and targeted programs in public schools such as pre-kindergarten and early college
have boosted educational levels of North Carolina's people."

"Is North Carolina losing its once-lofty perch?"


Schools honored

Clement graduation 2 2012
Fifteen NCNS-partner schools were among 28 schools honored last week by State Superintendent June Atkinson for achieving 100 percent graduation rates in 2012. Atkinson singled out 11 districts and 35 schools in all across the state for especially strong graduation results.

Read more ... 
 
More news from New Schools ...

Local honors for Eric Hines, principal of Early/Middle College High at NC A&T  
Guilford County Schools names Hines as district principal of the year for 2012.
 
Two NCNS-partner early colleges among 8 NC schools to win national Blue Ribbons

Early/Middle College High School at Bennett College and Robeson Early College High School were recognized for helping all students achieve at very high levels.

Education Week reports on Guilford County's growing success with early colleges

Now with nine early college high schools, the district that pioneered the model in North Carolina is demonstrating strong results for students.

Durham's Southern High gets STEM focus as Southern School of Energy and Sustainability
The Herald-Sun reports on the school's new small-school approach that borrows from the success of the district's other innovative secondary schools, including the Southern School of Engineering.