Dive Brief:
- After a request from a judge supervising a long-running education lawsuit, North Carolia's state school board has put forward a plan for correcting its "educational deficiencies."
- The plan includes a proposal to establish an advisory committee to discuss the academic struggles of at-risk students and how to rectify them.
- A hearing on the plan is slated for July 21-23, as part of the ongoing lawsuit, also known as Leandro.
Dive Insight:
The supervising judge in the case, Superior Court Judge Howard Manning, is a longtime critic of the state's school system. The Leandro case has been in progress since 1994 and laid out basic mandates for the state's districts, including college and career readiness, English fluency, and civic understanding. Whether the plan will adequately address Manning's concerns remains to be seen.
North Carolina won $400 million in Race to the Top funds and spent some of that on school improvement efforts and professional development. Much of that work makes up the plan the state board presented to Manning. By and large, the plan reiterated work the state has already completed while also touting its successes, including getting a majority of schools listed as low-performing off the list. Additionally, no traditional high school in the state graduates fewer than 60% of its students now — although the validity of many of the nation's graduation rates have recently been called into question.