Building a Skilled Workforce for the 21st Century
Reducing Dropout Rates
When it comes to building a strong workforce, nothing is more important than reducing today’s seemingly intractable high dropout rates. The Coalition supports the following strategies, each of which has the potential to enable more North Carolina students to successfully graduate from high school:
- Sustain and expand the dropout prevention grant program, but place a priority emphasis on programs that are based on sound research and programs that can be sustained over time. Given that many of the current grant-supported dropout reduction initiatives, especially those aimed at middle and elementary age students, will take years to make an impact, sustainability of these initiatives is key to their success.
- There is a growing consensus that the long-term solution to reducing dropout rates is to insure that school districts use diagnostic testing beginning in elementary school and have research-based early intervention strategies that will make it less and less likely that students fall hopelessly behind in their studies. It is especially important that there is a continuum of services for disadvantaged students who participate in More at Four.
- Two strategies that have the potential to boost the likelihood of educational success are supported by the Coalition. First, expanding the utilization of technology and long-distance learning will open up educational opportunities for more of our children. Second, expanding access to mentoring and/or afterschool, summer, or Saturday programs that blend academic support with enrichment activities aimed at motivating young people will provide more young people the extra focus and attention they need.
- Finally, the Coalition recognizes that schools cannot solve the dropout problem alone. The state needs to develop programs that meaningfully involve parents and the community in efforts to curb dropout rates and strengthen the future workforce of North Carolina.
Motivating Young People to Aspire to High Skill Employment
The degree to which our young people are lagging behind young people in other industrialized countries is well documented, as is the potential for the United States to fall behind other nations in STEM-related areas (i.e., science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). To motivate our young people to reach farther, the Coalition supports:
- Strengthening, not reducing, the career and technical options available to North Carolina students. Career-themed and focused high schools supported by the New Schools Project are encouraging models, but the challenge facing the State is how similar options can be made available to young people in each of the State’s 115 school systems.
- Meaningful career counseling needs to begin in the critical middle school years in an effort to focus students early and to place them in programs most likely to engage them in coursework and activities that will keep them motivated throughout their high school years.
- School curricula should be overhauled in order to better prepare young people for the world of work. All students should receive course work in areas such as technical reading and writing; all should be schooled in how to better manage personal finances.
Creating a Stronger Educational Infrastructure
North Carolina schools are going to be only as strong as the educational infrastructure which surrounds them, whether it is the schools of education that train teachers and administrators or the governance system that establishes the policies that govern schools. The Coalition believes that infrastructure needs to be dramatically strengthened in the following ways:
- Both the quality and the quantity of our educational pipeline needs to be improved. The failure of our teacher training institutions to produce enough graduates to insure that all of North Carolina’s young people are taught by well-prepared teachers must be addressed. Additionally, as a result of pending “baby boomer” retirements, North Carolina faces the same supply/demand issues when it comes to finding capable school administrators.
- Teacher and administrative preparation need to focus more on strategies that will lead to more success with disadvantaged young people most at risk of dropping out of school. Curbing today’s dropout rates must begin with stronger preparation of tomorrow’s teachers and administrators.
- Successful programs that can demonstrate results need to be expanded. An example of that is the North Carolina Principals’ Fellows Program which is producing well-trained candidates for the principalship who are in high demand. However, that program only produces roughly 60 graduates a year, a virtual drop in the bucket when compared to demand.
- North Carolina should be a leader in strengthening the preparation of school leaders. A concrete step that would place North Carolina in a leadership position would be to become a pilot state as the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards experiments with a similar certification process for school principals.
- North Carolina’s governance system needs to be overhauled. The Coalition applauds the General Assembly for launching an in-depth study of that system and is prepared to support recommendations that will clarify and strengthen the governance structure of K-12 education and resolve once and for all the “who’s in charge” issue.
- A necessary step toward strengthening the educational infrastructure is to rebuild the capacity of the Department of Public Instruction to meet the demands it faces.
- Finally, there appears to be a concerted effort to give public employees, including teachers, collective bargaining rights. As North Carolina works to dramatically improve its schools, the Coalition believes that contractual rights similar to those negotiated in other states (i.e. teacher transfers based on seniority, bans on financial incentives based on student performance, etc.) would be impediments to school improvement and opposes public employee bargaining in North Carolina.
Providing the Resources to do the Job
Recognizing that the current economic climate is going to present a major challenge to policymakers both in Raleigh and in our nation’s capital, the Coalition’s primary agenda is to work with the General Assembly in an attempt to avoid deep cuts in educational spending. In the words of Governor Perdue, it is critical that we avoid “eating our seed corn” when it comes to education. Beyond avoiding taking backward steps the Coalition believes:
- It is time to eliminate the discriminatory practice of requiring school systems to pay sales tax when other branches of state government, including the UNC system, churches, or nonprofit organizations are not required to do so.
- The Supreme Court has upheld a judicial ruling finding that the State of North Carolina owes schools over $700 million of revenue from fines and forfeitures received by the state, but not given to the public schools. The Coalition calls on the General Assembly to remedy the situation, even if it requires a multi-year solution that does not supplant existing resources.
- The backlog of school construction needs continues to grow. Estimated at $10 billion several years ago, the continued expansion of student enrollment has only exacerbated the issue. The General Assembly needs to address the issue by working with county and school leaders to frame a long-range construction plan that is a partnership between state and local government.
Conclusion
While the economic crisis gripping the world may slow educational initiatives, the Coalition believes that investments in education are the building block to economic recovery and prosperity. That is especially true in an era where globalization and technology have rewritten the rules for economic growth.
In closing, the Coalition believes that to make North Carolina’s schools what they could and should be it is necessary to focus first on building a skilled workforce and that must begin with curbing today’s dropout rates.
Secondly, the State must invest in strengthening its educational infrastructure beginning with building the quality and quantity of educators entering our schools and ending with overhauling today’s system of school governance.
Third, even in an economic downturn, the State will never realize its economic aspirations if it under invests in its schools. North Carolina must provide its schools with the resources needed to do the job.