Creating high schools that ensure all students graduate ready for college, careers and life takes diligence. Students, teachers and their schools need sustained support from their communities, starting with unmistakable demand for higher expectations and schools that can deliver on them.
Each of us can help:- Get the facts — Use the school performance tool to see how the schools you are most interested in are doing in terms of preparing all students for college, careers and life. Check out our results, which show innovation is making a difference for our students. Find out what local employers and instructors in first-year college courses think about the knowledge and skills recent high school graduates bring to the job and classroom.
- Go back to school — Ask to shadow a typical high school student through the school day. Notice if the day seems coherent. Notice how time is used during the day. Notice how much of that time the student seems engaged. Visit a nearby early college high school or redesigned traditional high school. Look for differences in expectations, teaching and learning and personalization. Take a 2007 yearbook and a 2010 yearbook from the same high school. Cross out the photo of any 9th grader in 2007 who doesn't appear as a 12th grader in 2010. Ask what happened to the students who you crossed out.
- Ask the question — Based on what you learn and see, raise the question in your community with other parents, other educators, other business leaders and public officials: What are we doing to ensure more students graduate this year ready for college, careers and life than graduated last year?
- Stay informed — Visit our website for the most recent information on high school innovation. Sign up to receive Innovator, NCNSP's twice-monthly email briefing, in the box at the right.
- Make an investment — Consider a donation to support the work of the NC New Schools Project. You can make a secure gift on our website.
