Welcome to INNOVATOR, an update on school and district transformation from North Carolina New Schools. Our newsletter aims to inform practitioners, policy makers, and friends of public education on innovation, workforce development, research and success stories from schools, districts and regions across the state. Please contact us to provide feedback and suggest ideas.
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Pioneering effort scaled up in Rutherford
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Janet H. Mason
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By Janet H. MasonSuperintendentRutherford County SchoolsEven before the first students arrived in August 2005, Rutherford Early College High School was meant to be larger than itself. We recognized that its greatest value to our rural school district was in pioneering approaches to high school education that would excite students about learning by challenging them with rigorous, engaging instruction and by luring them into college courses before they'd even had the chance to think about dropping out of high school. Eight years later, REaCH - as we call our early college - has  lost only one student as a dropout. The school's graduation rate in each of the last four years has exceeded 95 percent. Fully half of all graduates through 2012 earned an associate degree from Isothermal Community College while still in high school. This spring, all but a few members of the class of 2013 finished their high school careers with either an associate degree or two years of college credit. Yet even as good as those results are, they are not good enough. We envisioned that REaCH would be a catalyst for  innovation in our school district's three traditional high schools. We stated that goal in the first paragraph of our original grant proposal for the school, and we meant it. After I led the school's grant proposal and early design, our district's superintendent at that time assigned me to a principalship - not at the early college, but instead at one of our three traditional high schools. Her charge to me was, "Go there, and make things happen. Shake it up, and we'll begin to transform our traditional high schools in all the ways we expected REaCH to trigger." So, when North Carolina New Schools invited Rutherford County Schools to join an initiative aimed at applying early college strategies to traditional high schools, we didn't hesitate. Now, all three of our traditional, comprehensive high schools participate in the program called North Carolina Investing in Rural Innovative Schools (NC iRIS).
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Rural innovation reaches more students
More students in rural North Carolina will benefit this year from a pioneering effort aimed at transforming traditional high schools with innovative approaches yielding strong results in the state's growing number of early college high schools.
The initiative, led by NC New Schools, is gaining momentum this year with the addition of seven high schools to the five that launched the effort last year. The 12 schools are located in seven districts - stretching from Beaufort County in the east to Madison County in the west - all facing economic challenges.
Students in the schools are able to get a head start on college by taking courses through local community colleges, tuition free, along with academic support from their high school teachers. Teachers in the high schools receive intensive classroom-based coaching to better engage students through active learning that demands them to "read, write, think and talk in every class, every day."
Students are also able to take online college courses at no cost from East Carolina University or the UNC-Greensboro iSchool.
The goals of the initiative call for each school, at the end of three years, to have increased their graduation rate by 10 percent, reduced their dropout rate by 10 percent and for students to graduate from high school with significant college credit on their transcripts. Students have the opportunity to earn up to 21 credits, or about six or seven courses. Initially, 10th graders participating in the program take a college course in study skills, then as 11th and 12th graders, they choose from pathways that meet their individual needs.
Kayla Pritchard, a student at East Rutherford High School, sees new connections between high school and her future career path as a result of the new college course options that were created at the school last year.
"I never thought I would be able to attend college while in high school," Kayla said. "I am the first in my family to have this opportunity. I want to complete a nursing degree and then enter the military. Taking classes now is allowing me to accelerate my future."
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Teachers gain from workplace learning
Together with its partner schools, NC New Schools is engaging industry and higher education like never before to provide relevant industry-linked learning opportunities for North Carolina's students - and teachers - to help develop the skills needed for success in the workplace.
For their part, teachers this summer capitalized on a larger number and variety of summer opportunities open to them with businesses and other employers to learn first hand about the world of work. From intensive single-day experiences during STEM Day earlier this summer, to formal on-site externships to structured summer residencies, teachers from North Carolina's innovative schools gained real insight into the meaning of the word "relevance."
Teachers like Evelyn Baldwin, who teaches chemistry at Wake NC State University STEM Early College High School. Baldwin spent a few weeks this summer working alongside engineers at LORD Corp., a Cary-based technology company that produces coatings and adhesives widely used in the automotive, aeronautic and other industries.
"The ability to work in a laboratory research environment will enable me to bring practical experiences back to my students," Baldwin said. "During my time as a LORD extern I worked with two-part polymer adhesives and developed a 3 -week project-based-learning project for my honors Chemistry and Engineering Design II courses.
"My students will get to experience being a chemical and materials engineer during their time in my class. I am very excited about being able to give my students this real-world STEM experience."
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More than 500 early college leaders, school administrators and higher education partners will meet Oct. 29-30 in Research Triangle Park to explore the policies and practices required to consistently graduate fragile learners and first generation college goers fully prepared for success beyond high school. The National Early College Conference is co-hosted by Jobs for the Future and North Carolina New Schools.
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Graduation Gains
North Carolina New Schools partner schools achieved a combined graduation rate of 90.7 percent for the class of 2013, an increase of more than two percentage points from 88.1 percent in 2012.
Graduation Rates, 2013
Source: North Carolina New Schools analysis of 2013 graduation data from NC Department of Public Instruction.
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Meet an Innovator
 | Anna Outlaw
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Growing up in a family of teachers in Duplin County, Anna Outlaw swore she would never be a teacher and she would definitely not come back to Duplin County as an adult. Fortunately for the students at Duplin Early College High School, she broke both of those promises.
"In high school, I had a math teacher who sat at the podium and talked for the entire period - she told us a math rule and then we did it 50 times," says Outlaw, now a math teacher herself. "I became a teacher because I didn't want it to be that way. So when I'm lesson planning, I think about how I was as a student. There are things that students just have to practice - like solving equations. But I'm not going to stick them in rows and make them do 50 problems in a row. I need to find a way to help them enjoy what they're doing."
Outlaw teaches in a rural county that is expanding early college strategies to every school in the district. That means the instructional approach she uses in her classroom - and the belief that every students deserves access to postsecondary education - are universal across the district.
"College-ready doesn't necessarily mean all students will go to a four-year university, but everyone needs training in some way that will make them successful after high school," says Outlaw. "We're trying to give them the steps and the resources to be successful after high school, no matter which path they take. Getting the college credits and learning those skill strategies in the classroom will help them be successful when they leave our school."
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