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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NC hosts conference on early college
 Educators and policy experts from as far away as Hawaii, Utah and California will be among several hundred participants in a national conference on early college high school Oct. 29-30 in the Research Triangle. North Carolina is home to nearly 80 of the innovative schools, which blend high school and college, the most of any state in the nation. Among keynote speakers at the event will be Freeman Hrabowski, III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Hrabowski has been profiled by CBS's 60 Minutes, US News & World Report, Time, Washington Post and others for building a powerhouse college in math, science and engineering that last year saw 41 percent of its bachelor's degrees awarded in those key fields. Other speakers include Stanley Litow, IBM's vice president of corporate citizenship and corporate affairs. Litow helped devise an innovative early college in New York City known as P-TECH, which engages companies, colleges, communities and schools to helps connect education to jobs. During the conference school administrators and higher education partners will explore the policies and practices required to consistently graduate fragile learners and first generation college goers fully prepared for success beyond high school. The conference is co-hosted by Jobs for the Future and North Carolina New Schools.
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Report: Innovation key to critical skills
A new report out earlier this month from a national business organization points to high school innovation in North Carolina as crucial for ensuring that the state and its workforce is prepared to compete in the global economy.
 The Washington-based group, America's Edge, says in the report - Ensuring North Carolina's Global Success -- that the state needs to increase access to high school models that engage students with relevant lessons that combine rigorous academics with work-based learning experiences and an emphasis on critical thinking, collaboration and communication skills.
Without such efforts, the report warns, an already troubling "skills gap" in the state is likely to widen even further over the next decade.
"Innovative high school education models help students stay engaged in school so they graduate with a concrete understanding of what they will need to succeed in the workforce and education post-high school," the report states, "thus better ensuring North Carolina businesses have a workforce armed with the skills required in the global marketplace."
The report highlights three schools that are partners with NC New Schools: Wayne School of Engineering, Yadkin Valley Regional Career Academy and Wake Early College of Health and Sciences.
The report urges state policy makers to invest in school models that are proving successful in graduating students with the skills that businesses need. In addition, school districts must have the flexibility, the report notes, to adopt education approaches that are proving successful in providing students with deeper learning.
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Johnston Early College pursues recruits
 From the time it opened five years ago, Johnston Early College Academy was one of the best kept secrets in a fast-growing district where most high schools are strong and traditional.
What the non-traditional early college lacks in sports teams, it more than makes up for in other opportunities. What it lacks in electives, it makes up for with access  to college courses at Johnston Community College. Students are able to get a head start on college, beginning as early as ninth grade, and earn an associate degree with their high school diploma in five years.
The secret's now out.
This year's freshman class of 50 students was drawn from a pool of 600 applicants - twice the number of applicants from 2012 and a whopping five-fold increase from two years earlier.
The surge in interest was no accident. It was the result of a deliberate effort by the school's administration and faculty to ensure that every eighth grader in the district - all 2,678 of them - didn't just know about their school. They knew what was in it for them. They knew how and when to apply. The school also simplified an application process -- rivaling applications to some selective colleges - that may have been a barrier to some students. It was reduced from six pages to one, and made easily accessible online.
That nearly a quarter of the district's eighth graders submitted an application is telling evidence of a strategy that worked.
The key, says Principal Brandon Garland, was simple: "It was our willingness to go to kids instead of them coming to us."
Read more ...
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NC must stand firm on Common Core
 | | Tony Habit |
By Tony HabitPresidentNorth Carolina New SchoolsThe Common Core standards now followed by North Carolina's public schools are just a matter of common sense, as a number of business leaders said at a recent news conference to highlight a report from America's Edge forecasting a growing skills gap in the state's workforce. We're including here an op-ed I wrote last year for The News & Observer of Raleigh. Given the current conversation, I think it may have even greater relevance now: There's ample evidence that students across the United States are losing their competitive edge in a world that is only becoming more competitive by the day. Few would argue the fact that jobs are harder to get. Good jobs that pay a living wage, even harder. And more and more of those jobs, we know, are now up for grabs on a global scale. Students who go no further than high school - or worse, drop out - have little chance of finding meaningful work that pays a decent wage. So it only makes sense that North Carolina's public schools do whatever it takes to raise their standards to give every student a real opportunity to achieve the American Dream. The common core state standards that North Carolina has adopted along with nearly every other state are designed so all students graduate from high school well prepared to enter college or some other kind of workforce training that's now essential to get a good job. ... To be sure, that's easier said than done. Making good on that promise isn't just a matter of rewriting the curriculum and revising the tests to measure student performance against new and more demanding standards. The real burden and promise of this high challenge rests with teachers. They must be supported through thoughtful professional development that not only ensures they understand the new standards, but also helps makes them the most effective teachers possible. While the common core standards are new, North Carolina has spent nearly 10 years quietly laying a solid foundation for this kind of effort at the high school level. A growing number of innovative high schools, some of which date to 2005 or earlier, are all guided by a shared roadmap - a common set of proven design principles - where readiness for all students is the final destination.
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Meet an Innovator
 | Jason Chambers
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Jason Chambers carries a lot of job titles at Tri-County Community College and Tri-County Early College in North Carolina's far western corner - college liaison, instructor, dean of research and planning. But just don't call him a middle man.
"The most important job for me has been fostering good relationships between the folks at the community college and the folks at the early college," Chambers says. "If the principal needs a certain type of classroom, my job is to help her build the relationship with the right person on the community college campus so that she doesn't need me as a middle man."
It takes some diplomacy to get everyone comfortable, Chambers admits. But by creating events that bring faculty together from both the high school and community college, the two groups are able to collaborate in ways that benefit both schools. He sometimes brings community college faculty to the annual NC New Schools Summer Institute so they can better understand the early college mission. Anything he can do to bridge the two cultures becomes part of his job.
"You shouldn't have two completely separate schools - the early college needs to be a division of studies in its college," Chambers says. "A middle man wastes time and opportunity. There are no connections being made that way. You have to respect the college's way of doing things, but have to make sure the college understands how they benefit from the early college being there, too."
Read more ...
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Widening skills gap
More good jobs with good wages will require workers with at least an associate degree.
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Graduation honors
The state's innovative high schools were well represented Aug. 23, when State Superintendent June Atkinson honored schools with the highest graduation rates in 2013.
Twenty-eight of the 36 schools recognized statewide for achieving 100 percent graduation rates are partner schools of NC New Schools. Of the 84 partner schools with graduating cohorts this past spring, one-third of them made graduation rates of 100 percent; nearly two thirds had graduation rates of at least 95 percent.
Three of the top 10 districts Atkinson honored for high graduation rates are home to NC New Schools partner schools.
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Applications are now available for a unique, cost-free alternate route to teaching secondary school math, science and technology. College graduates and mid-career professional with STEM-related degrees are invited to apply.
Learn more ...
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