News

Topic: NC Teachers Marching Again On May 16th last year, nearly 20,000 North Carolina teachers descended on Raleigh for a march and rally outside the NC General Assembly asking for more support for public schools and respect for the teaching profession. Teachers are planning another rally on May 1 this year asking the General Assembly […]

Topic:  Expanding NC’s Teacher Pipeline Our state’s public schools are facing critical teacher shortages and longer term teaching vacancies. At the same time, enrollment in the state’s teacher preparation programs continue to lag. In response, state leaders have been looking at ways to expand the teacher pipeline including recruiting more out-of-state teachers and adding new […]

Topic: Talking Testing with Teacher Legislators There appears to be a growing bipartisan consensus that we’re over-testing our state’s public school students. There’s also increasing scrutiny over how those standardized tests are being used to assign A-F letter grades to schools and to set pay for teachers and principals. This week we talk with two […]

Topic: One-on-One with NC Governor Roy Cooper Two years ago, Roy Cooper was elected Governor of North Carolina as a champion for teachers and public schools. He’s just unveiled his proposed state budget to a more balanced General Assembly than the Republican supermajority of his first two years, but one where the GOP remains firmly […]

Topic: Newsmakers This week on Education Matters we welcome two educators who are making news. First up is Leigh Kokenes. She’s a School Psychologist in the Wake County Public Schools System and was recently named the National School Psychologist of the Year. We’ll talk to Leigh about role of a school psychologist and what our […]

Topic: One-On-One with State Superintendent Mark Johnson It’s been more than two years since Mark Johnson was elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction. He’s just unveiled a new initiative that aims to make North Carolina the best place to learn and teach by the year 2030. Superintendent Johnson joins us this week for the full […]

Topic: Documenting Historically Segregated Black Schools The history of school desegregation includes many important stories of courageous African American families and their children who were the first to attend previously whites-only schools. But there’s another history that often goes untold. That one is about the rich history of education provided by the historically segregated black […]

Topic: Inequity in School Funding A study released this week by the Public School Forum of NC shows a growing gap in public school funding between the highest and lowest-wealth counties in the state. These funding disparities have a real impact on education, including the ability of lower wealth counties to fund local supplemental pay […]

Topic: Exploring Rural-Urban North Carolina According to the Institute for Emerging Issues at NC State, people in North Carolina are feeling more disconnected than ever and they want to do something about it. So IEI launched a three-year initiative called ReCONNECT NC and this week hundreds of people convened in Raleigh to focus on reconnection […]