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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Top scoring nations focus on long view
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Tony Habit
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By Tony HabitPresidentNC New SchoolsFirst, the good news: American 15-year-olds score above average when it comes to creatively solving problems posed on an international assessment. Now the not-so-good news: Their peers from other nations typically associated with strong overall academic performance - Korea, Finland, Japan - score even higher.
This all according to the Programme for International Student Assessment, better known as PISA, administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to students in more than 40 countries and economies. The assessment is given to representative samples of students every three years, covering mathematics, reading and science. The most recent administration, in 2012, also included for the first time a section on problem solving. [Try it yourself.]
The above-average performance by U.S. students in problem solving helps affirm generally held assumptions that Americans tend to be pretty good at thinking outside the box to solve problems. The American students did better in problem-solving than on the other sections of the assessment, where their results lagged behind a sobering number of industrialized nations.
But the results also suggest that other nations and economies with especially strong performance in mathematics, reading and science - Korea, Finland, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong among them - also stand out with real strength in creative problem solving. In other words, nations that excel in areas that critics of PISA say demonstrate an emphasis on rote learning also succeed in helping students think flexibly and solve problems creatively.
Read more ...
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Dropouts few from innovative schools
North Carolina's innovative schools continue to demonstrate strong results by ensuring that students stay in school and keep on track to graduation.
The latest dropout data released by the State Board of Education earlier this month show that schools partnered with North Carolina New Schools in 2012-2013 lost comparatively few students. More than half of the 103 schools that NC New Schools helped support last year had no dropouts from any grade, and eight of every 10 of the schools had no dropouts from 9th grade, when students are most vulnerable to quitting school.
The combined dropout rate for the 103 schools was 1.3 percent, a slight improvement from the previous year's rate of 1.4 percent. The statewide rate reported by the State Board of Education for all high schools was 2.45 percent.
Key findings in the state data for 2012-2013 NC New Schools partner schools include:
* 54 NC New Schools partner schools lost no students to dropping out (see list at end of story)
* 79 of the partner schools lost no more than two students as dropouts
* 82 partner schools lost no students from 9th grade
* The 77 partner early colleges had a combined dropout rate of only 0.3 percent.
* Of the nearly 15,000 students enrolled in the early colleges in 2012-2013, just 50 dropped out of all grades, and only six 9th graders quit school.
The annual dropout rate measures the percentage of students who quit school in a given year. Student attrition is also measured by the graduation rate, which tracks students from 9th grade to graduation four years later. While that "cohort graduation rate" is considered a more comprehensive indicator of schools' performance in keeping students in school to completion, the annual dropout rate does provide an index for comparison among schools and over time.
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Study visit: "A new look on learning"
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Imani Burwell
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NC New Schools recently led a group of North Carolina students and educators on a study visit to Henrico County, Virginia. Imani Burwell, an 11th grader at Franklin County Early College High School, was a member of the student contingent.As a student on the Virginia study trip, I experienced so many new things. We learned about innovative practices within Henrico County Schools, Randolph-Henry High School and the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research. We also were able to network with people from different school systems around North Carolina and compare and contrast how each of our schools functions. I believe it was a brilliant idea to involve students in this study trip because it threw us out of our comfort zone, so we could speak about our own ideas of what we believe our school system should be like. Visiting the Henrico County Schools gave me a new look on learning; being able to observe how groups of students act in a classroom rather than being a student participant was fantastic. I could finally focus not only on the curriculum, but also on how the curriculum was being learned. It felt kind of like dissecting the process of learning and having done so will help me learn even better. At Deep Run High School, I visited many different classrooms with different subjects, but from class to class it felt as if the same methods of teaching were going on even though the curriculum was different. I observed lots of use of technology and student-to-student collaboration. So I wondered, are technology and collaboration the basis of 21st century learning? And are they even effective? I believe very much so because as I walked around the classrooms every student was focused and fully engaged. Many also did not rely on teacher help. It seemed as if they really knew what they were doing and had a greater amount of prior knowledge. I hope this type of learning is something we could work towards in the Franklin County School System. Our first step would be raising money to provide every child in our county or even just the early college with their own laptop. This would allow us to become a part of the 21st century learning curve.
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Data Snapshot:
North Carolina's dropout rate improved for the sixth consecutive year in 2012-2013, declining from 3.01 percent for the prior year to 2.45 percent. The combined rate for NC New Schools partner schools dipped also, to 1.3 percent.
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Source: NC Department of Instruction, NC New Schools analysis
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Meet two innovators
 Listening to Don Phipps and Barbara Tansey talk about innovation in public education in Beaufort County is inspiring. The Beaufort County school superintendent and community college president practically finish each other's sentences as they describe the close relationship between their two institutions.
"We're changing the culture in our community, not just in the two organizations," says Tansey, the community college president.
The energy and passion they share for making a difference in their eastern North Carolina community is palpable. "We're on the same page and we're not afraid to challenge the old way of thinking to benefit our county," Superintendent Phipps says, of working with Tansey.
Through a partnership with NC New Schools, the county already offered students a chance to earn community college credits in high school at Beaufort County Early College and at the Northeast Regional School of Biotechnology and Agriscience. Those efforts have now expanded through the North Carolina Investing in Rural Innovative Schools initiative to bring NC New Schools' proven Design Principles and research-based early college high school strategies into three of the county's traditional high schools serving high-need students. The rural schools initiative is supported by a $15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education over five years with matched private donations of $1.5 million under the federal Investing in Innovation (i3) initiative.
"We got more involved through the i3 grant, but we were already having this conversation," Phipps says. "The grant allowed us to push down the accelerator, get things done more quickly and launch other opportunities. We don't duplicate efforts as we find out what we need to do to set up kids to be successful."
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