Editorial from the September 2004 issue


Head of the Class

In his State of the State address in 1999, Gov. Jim Hunt laid down a daunting challenge. “By the year 2010, North Carolina will build the best system of public schools of any state in America. By the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, we will be the first in education.”

As we near the halfway point on the road that Hunt set the state on — a path which Gov. Mike Easley has doggedly followed — it seems an appropriate time to pause and attempt to determine how much progress has been made and how much more remains to be achieved. That’s what we attempt to do in this month’s Cover Story, which begins on page 46.

As writer Lisa Towle reports, the improvements in our K-12 system have been so impressive that we now are widely regarded as having the nation’s most rapidly improving schools. By almost every yardstick used, academic achievement in reading, math and science — by students at all grade levels — is rising steadily. This year, SAT scores crossed the symbolically important 1,000-point plateau, among the best in the Southeast. The percentage of elementary school students passing their end-of-grade tests rose to 81.3 percent, which doesn’t sound all that impressive until you consider that it’s a 32 percent improvement since 1996, the first year of the statewide testing program.

We could go on citing statistics like that, but this story is about more than numbers. At bottom, North Carolina’s commitment to improving our schools was about redefining our priorities. And it was a commitment made within our broader understanding of economic development. On those two points, Towle reports there is great news.

First, she quotes State Board of Education Chairman Howard Lee as saying that we have made such steady progress that perhaps it’s time to reassess how far and how fast we really can go. “Is it time to raise the bar again?” he asks. Second — and this to me is the most astounding assessment in the whole story — we hear Joe Freddoso, the Cisco Systems executive who chairs the N.C. Business Committee for Education, say that, in the economic development community at least, our schools have been transformed from pig’s ear to silk purse. “Companies saw the K-12 education system as a potential disadvantage when contemplating relocating or putting major operations in the state,” Freddoso says. “Now, our schools are among the best in the Southeast and on a path to become among the highest rated in the nation.”

For that, let’s give ourselves a gold star.

-- Steve Tuttle