SOE News

Education Leaders and N.C. Policymakers Discuss How to Improve Schools

Dec. 13, 2005

Many of North Carolina’s key education policy shapers gathered on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus on Dec. 12, 2005, for the first Carolina Seminar on School Improvement. The roundtable seminar was co-hosted by Dean Thomas James of the School of Education and Ferrel Guillory, director of the UNC-Chapel Hill Program on Southern Politics, Media and Public Life. The event was designed in collaboration with the office of Governor Mike Easley.  

The 40 participants included members of the N.C. General Assembly, representatives of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor’s offices, business and civic leaders, public school educators and university faculty. 

Dean James challenged the group to engage in a serious and substantive conversation on the state’s educational future.  “Our agenda is both humble and bold,” he said. “If we focus our efforts, we can transform policy and affect teaching and learning across North Carolina.” He expressed his commitment to harness the resources of the University to transform K-12 education.

Howard Lee, chairman of the State Board of Education, described some of Governor Easley’s priorities for making change in education in North Carolina. “The ultimate goal is to provide every child in this state with access to a quality education,” Lee said.

In the early grades, Lee pointed to the importance of focusing on kindergarten and class size reduction as well as expanding early intervention programs such as More at Four.

At the high school level, Lee reported that Governor Easley’s priorities include: Teaching marketable skills while keeping open the possibility of college through programs such as Learn and Earn; developing rigorous new high schools focused on themes such as biotechnology, health care, and global education; and embracing the American Diploma Project, which aligns high school proficiencies with college admission requirements.

“In addition, the Governor will soon announce a virtual, online high school for North Carolina,” Lee noted.

Barnett Berry, president of the Center for Teaching Quality in Chapel Hill, N.C., proposed solutions to some of “the big issues” in school reform and teacher quality. “We need to stop thinking about one teacher per 25 students,” he stated. “We need to think about cadres of teachers and cadres of children.” 

Berry advocated for an expanded Teaching Fellows Program, incentives for out-of-field teachers to be trained to teach high demand subjects, virtual teacher leadership to allow accomplished teachers to share their expertise, incentives for accomplished teachers to mentor novices and new assessments to measure teacher effectiveness over time. 

“We also need a marketing campaign to inform the public that high schools and teaching need to look different in order to improve dramatically,” Berry said.

Cathy McCluskey, a teacher at East Wake School of Health Sciences, emphasized that teacher/student relationships are the key to effective teaching. “The relationships have to be there first,” she said. “Then rigor and relevance will follow.”

Gary Henry, professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy studies at Georgia State University, outlined the next big need in assessment.  “Accountability has already focused teachers on what to teach,” Henry said.  “The next steps are for schools to make real efforts to improve instruction, for school administrators to use test results to guide instruction and for school districts to use test results to improve student performance.” 

In order to accomplish those next steps, Henry pointed out that teachers need better professional development, not necessarily more. Also, the teaching and learning process needs to be reorganized using a regrouping strategy:  Assess, group, teach, reassess, regroup, teach and so on. 

Finally, Henry said, “We need incentives for high quality teaching, ways of getting the best teachers assigned to the most challenging students.”

After much lively exchange, the participants concurred that future seminars are needed — with more teachers at the table — to learn more about research findings and to create a comprehensive policy framework that will allow for connecting the pieces. 

“We need to preserve the best and change the rest,” Howard Lee said.  “Structure is extremely important.  Within that structure, we need possibilities for creativity, flexibility and exploration in order to learn how to learn.  Only then can we create a total approach to educating the children of our state.”