Our guest this week is best-selling author Richard Rothstein. He’s a Senior Fellow at the Haas Institute at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute. His research focuses primarily on the history of segregation in the United States in education and housing. In his latest book, “The Color of Law”, he tackles what he says is the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation from personal choices and individual prejudices. Instead, he details how laws and policy decisions made by local, state, and federal governments that promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
Research from the Friday Institute shows disappointing results from a North Carolina reading initiative. Photo Credit: Roger Winstead.
North Carolina’s Read to Achieve initiative, the state program supporting reading mastery for all third-grade students, appears to have had no effect on reading scores for the first two cohorts of students exposed to the program, according to research and analysis conducted by North Carolina State University.
Read to Achieve legislation was passed in North Carolina in 2012 and implemented for the first time in the 2013-14 school year. An effort to boost the reading achievement of elementary-school students, it attempts to replace social promotion based on age with an emphasis on demonstrated proficiency in reading. Research shows that reading at grade level in third grade is an important factor in continued school success.
Stallings, T. “Analysis Detects No State-Level Impacts for ‘Read to Achieve’ Initiative.” NC State News. 10/18/18.
NC Leaders Approve $850 Million for Hurricane Florence Recovery. How Will They Spend It?
Eastern North Carolina residents and community activists held a press conference Tuesday to call on state legislators to increase disaster relief spending after Hurricane Florence. Photo Credit: Will Doran, The News & Observer.
College students, small business owners, families with young children and rural hospitals and fire departments are just some of those now eligible for hundreds of millions of dollars in state hurricane recovery money.
The N.C. General Assembly voted Monday night to approve $850 million in Hurricane Florence relief, including $450 million that can be spent right away and $400 million that state leaders will decide in the coming months how to spend.
Doran, W. “NC leaders approve $850 million for Hurricane Florence recovery. How will they spend it?” The News & Observer. 10/15/18.
Image Credit: NC Policy Watch.
If North Carolina goes forward with the recommendation to allow a private charter operator to take control of a Goldsboro elementary school, they should expect a stubborn resistance, the school’s principal told Policy Watch Wednesday.
Ball, B. “Battle looms as state officials propose takeover of Goldsboro elementary school.” NC Policy Watch. 10/17/18.
New Twist on Town Charter Flap: Did Lawmaker Offer CMS a Favor If They’d Fire One Man?
NC High School Students Rank Near the Bottom on the ACT Exam. There’s a Reason Why.
Rep. Bill Brawley spoke about a request from Matthews to look at the possibility of seceding from Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools at the Ballantyne Breakfast Club in April 2016. Photo Credit: John D. Simmons, The Charlotte Observer.
Three top Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials said Tuesday that state Rep. Bill Brawley offered early this year to kill a controversial town charter bill if CMS would fire its governmental liaison.
While rumors have floated for months, this is the first time anyone has gone on the record saying Brawley made the offer. School board Chair Mary McCray, Vice Chair Rhonda Cheek and Superintendent Clayton Wilcox said Tuesday that Brawley, a Republican lawmaker from Matthews, told them he’d withdraw House Bill 514 if Wilcox would fire Charles Jeter, a former Republican state representative who had alienated Brawley in his new role.
Doss Helms, A. “New twist on town charter flap: Did lawmaker offer CMS a favor if they’d fire one man?” The Charlotte Observer. 10/17/18.
Members of the Governor’s Commission on Access to Sound Basic Education met at the Cumberland County Board of Education on Tuesday. Analisa Sorrells, EducationNC.
On Tuesday, the Governor’s Commission on Access to Sound Basic Education convened in Fayetteville to consider the role that principals play in ensuring that North Carolina meets its obligation to provide all students with access to a sound basic education. Tuesday’s meeting was part of the ongoing work of the commission to provide recommendations on how the state can meet the requirements of the 1977 Leandro decision. Previous meetings of the commission focused on topics such as school funding and early childhood education.
The commission will meet again on Dec. 4. Future meeting dates have been scheduled through April 2019, after which the commission is expected to craft a final report. According to Geoff Coltrane, senior education advisor to Governor Roy Cooper, a website that explains the commission’s work and offers links to all previous meeting materials will be available to the public soon.
Sorrells, A. “Governor’s commission discusses principal pipeline.” EducationNC. 10/18/18.
An elementary school in the Robeson County school district, one of five low-wealth school districts that sued the state of North Carolina for failing to provide adequate resources. Photo Credit: Gerry Dincher, Flickr.
Cooper, M. “This 24-year-old lawsuit could radically alter public education in North Carolina.” Scalawag. 10/15/18.
North Carolina elementary schools who were hard hit by Hurricane Florence will get some relief from having to give state-required tests while they recover from the effects of the storm.
The State Board of Education unanimously voted Tuesday to waive a policy requiring kindergarten through third-grade students to take three reading assessments this school year. State education officials say districts that were hardest hit by the storm, such as those where students lost a significant amount of time when schools closed, will be eligible to receive the one-year waiver.
Hui, K. “NC will reduce testing for elementary schools hard hit by Hurricane Florence.” The Charlotte Observer. 10/16/18.
In this May 6, 2015 file photo, a computer-based practice ACT English test is displayed on a computer monitor in Washington. Photo Credit: Jacquelyn Martin, AP.
North Carolina high school students continue to rank near the bottom of the nation on the ACT exam, but there’s at least a partial reason for the state’s performance.
New results released Wednesday from the Class of 2018 show that North Carolina’s average score remained at 19.1 out of a possible 36. The state was below the national average of 20.8 and tied for 46th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Hui, K. “NC high school students rank near the bottom on the ACT exam. There’s a reason why.” The News & Observer. 10/17/18.
Trinity Hughes, left, and Zyahna Bryant at Charlottesville High School, where they are seniors. Photo Credit: Matt Eich, The New York Times.
Charlottesville, Va. — This article was reported and written in a collaboration with ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization.
Zyahna Bryant and Trinity Hughes, high school seniors, have been friends since they were 6, raised by blue-collar families in this affluent college town. They played on the same T-ball and softball teams, and were in the same church group.
But like many African-American children in Charlottesville, Trinity lived on the south side of town and went to a predominantly black neighborhood elementary school. Zyahna lived across the train tracks, on the north side, and was zoned to a mostly white school, near the University of Virginia campus, that boasts the city’s highest reading scores.
Green, E. and Waldman, A. “‘You Are Still Black’: Charlottesville’s Racial Divide Hinders Students.” The New York Times. 10/16/18.
Four months after deciding to put on hold Obama-era rules relating to racial disparities in special education, the U.S. Department of Education has signaled it plans to take a crack at creating its own set of policies on the topic.
Samuels, C. “Ed. Dept. Signals New Attempt to Address Racial Bias in Special Education.” Education Week. 10/17/18.
Are students tracked to certain careers based on socioeconomics or the reputation of a job? How can we better connect students to businesses and ensure all students are aware of their career potential?
Hope Street Group, in concert with the North Carolina Business Committee of Education, needs your perspective to improve work-based learning for K-12 students in North Carolina. Visit ednc.org/hopestreet for a 15-minute survey that will be used by local and state decision-makers to discuss how we best support students in career awareness and exploration.
All teachers, school staff, administrators, parents, business leaders, district staff, and community members can participate—so please share. Perspectives from everyone are needed: elementary educators, small business owners, principals, literacy coaches, school counselors, community college staff and educators, parents of students across K-12. If you have an interest in education, please take this survey by 10/31/18 and encourage others to do the same at ednc.org/hopestreet.
Your colleagues in the Hope Street Group North Carolina Teacher Voice Network are counting on you to help them amplify your voice and opinions.
Designed to equally educate and appreciate our state’s incredibly teachers, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Carolina K-12, in partnership with the North Caroliniana Society and Wilson Library’s North Carolina Collection, invite 4-12 grade teachers from around the state to join us for an engaging (and FREE!) two and a half day academic retreat in beautiful Chapel Hill, NC, with a special “field-trip” to Historic Hillsborough. Throughout these engaging three days, teachers will enjoy a snapshot of some of North Carolina’s most captivating history, events and people, all the while celebrating each participating teacher and the important work you do!
Check out the agenda here. For additional information and to apply, click here.