Terry Stoops

Today, the N.C. State Board of Education (SBE) announced that Dr. Eric Hall, president and CEO of Communities In Schools of North Carolina, was hired to lead the new Achievement School District. The SBE made a wise decision to hire someone who has a successful track record of working…

The North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) survey, Pass House Bill 13 to Save Teachers, Increase Per Pupil Funding to National Average, tells you all you need to know about the push to get the N.C. Senate to pass House Bill 13.  Currently, HB 13 is in the…

Last year, an intern and I attempted to obtain public school employee salary data for each of North Carolina’s 115 school districts.  The N.C. Department of Public Instruction does not maintain a central database of employee compensation information.  As a result, we were forced to contact each district and requested…

After years of losing enrollment and market share to homeschools, school districts are looking for ways to bring them back into the district system, mostly to boost revenues.  Last year, Tammy Covil wrote about school district recruitment efforts that invite homeschool families to enroll in district-sponsored e-learning academies.  She…

In his North State Journal op-ed, Rep. Bill Brawley (R-Mecklenburg), chairman of the House Finance Committee, affirms his commitment to the Opportunity Scholarship Program and urges his colleagues to do the same. Thanks to these reforms, parents no longer face a one-size-fits-all, top-down bureaucratic approach to their child’s public…

Charles Jeter, a former N.C. House member and current government relations coordinator for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, has a confession to make.  In an op-ed published by the Charlotte Observer, Jeter declares that he regrets voting for private school vouchers as a member of the legislature. He writes, “The problem…

Governor Roy Cooper’s budget would discontinue the expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, funding scholarships only for those low-income children already receiving them. According to the N.C. State Education Assistance Authority, 59 percent of the nearly 5,500 low-income students receiving an Opportunity Scholarship belong to an ethnic or racial…

Want a quick and easy way to raise graduation rates?  Credit recovery courses are the method of choice for many school districts.  Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews writes, High school science teacher Jeremy Noonan will never forget his training as an online credit recovery teacher in Douglas County, Ga.