k-12

For fiscal year 2015-16, the General Fund budget will rise 3.1 percent to $21.7 billion, below the combined rates of population growth and inflation. The following year, the budget will have an overall increase of less than one-percent.

From statehouses to corporate boardrooms to community centers, Americans are nearly universally aligned in support of transforming public education. Dismayed by overcrowding, low test scores, and high dropout rates, many people advocate overhauling the educational system in our country. Yet, however unified Americans may be on the need for educational reform, their perspectives diverge greatly on how to achieve it. Recent proposals have ranged from increasing federal funding, to requiring more stringent teacher accreditation, to lengthening school days and terms. Despite more than a decade of discussion, legislative proposals, and counterproposals, many problems remain. Yet, as public debate rages on, a group of concerned parents and educators, advocating freedom and change, is already quietly revolutionizing public education. The persistence of these reformers has resulted in a compelling alternative to traditional public schools — charter schools.

Most Americans agree that public education is in trouble. While legislators and educators have tried to fix failing schools by increasing funding, expanding regulations, or intensifying requirements for teachers, these changes have only served to patch a broken system. Public education in America needs radical reinvention, and charter schools provide an effective and powerful way to transform the educational system.

This fifth annual report on schools from the North Carolina Education Alliance shows that many school districts in the state made progress in 2001-02. It also shows that many of the failing school systems from 2000-01 were still performing in the failing range again last year. Official results of statewide testing are reported annually in the Department of Public Instruction’s ABCs of Public Education. End-of-grade tests for elementary students and end-of-course tests for high school students are the only exams administered statewide each year. As such, information about public schools is focused on the results of these exams. Grading Our Schools offers a different lens for studying test results and other performance data. As an additional information tool, we hope it will allow parents and taxpayers to better evaluate student performance in North Carolina’s public schools.

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is a private organization formed in 1987 with the goal of establishing standards for teaching effectiveness and certifying those teachers it identified as especially capable. NBPTS has written standards that purport to show what accomplished teachers “should know and be able to do” and has established a certification procedure that relies on videotapes, portfolios and written essays. There are currently more than 16,000 National Board certified teachers in the United States, more than 20% of them in North Carolina.