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DURHAM -- While much of the talk at the meeting of the state's top education officials Tuesday focused on the future -- on improving technology, expanding bandwidth and standardizing data collection -- administrators also were abruptly reminded that there's still much to do about the present.
"Personally, I'm embarrassed that our state [high school] graduation rate is 70 percent," state Board of Education Chairman Bill Harrison told other members of the North Carolina Education Cabinet in Durham's Research Triangle Park. "Until we are all embarrassed about that 70 percent, we have work to do. We all have to take ownership of this."
Harrison said focusing on only improving standards for high school education would not be sufficient. "We can increase standards all we want for grades 9-12," he said, "but if we don't do something about K-8, it won't make a difference."
UNC system President Erskine Bowles, another member of the cabinet, agreed. Noting that less than half of the state's graduating high school seniors can read at grade level, Bowles said the problem is that those standards simply are too low.
The solution he said, is that "we must produce not just more teachers, but better teachers. That must be our No. 1 priority."
The meeting -- which included officials from UNC, the state Department of Public Instruction and the community college system -- was the first session for the cabinet since the General Assembly passed a budget that made major cuts to education spending.
Gov. Beverly Perdue said she was unhappy about cuts, and "I won't let that happen again."
Despite the cuts, the cabinet heard plans for increasing the reach of NCREN -- the North Carolina Research and Education Network -- which ties together the state's local school districts and its universities and community colleges. The goal of the network, among other objectives, is to continue to increase opportunities for e-learning,
Increased connectivity also would allow for more remote mentoring of young teachers, for instance, and for bringing Research Triangle Park scientists to classrooms in rural districts via technology, officials were told.
