One in five Americans attends or works at a K-12 school.^[1]  Given North Carolin's population of 10.7 million people⁽²⁾, this requires 640,000 administrators, staff and teachers in 120 districts, encompassing 2,475 schools, to serve and support nearly 1.5 million students^.[3] You are getting this email because you have a leadership role in that effort.

In today's society an educational leader is climbing a steep hill, with the path made difficult by lack of funding, the aftermath of Covid, teacher shortage, controversy about books in school libraries, the role of computers, student safety and many other challenges.

Being a successful leader is hard.

In America, there are half-a-dozen organizations that rank order the performance of schools, school districts, and states. Some include the success/failure of state higher eduction institutions, some only look at graduation rates and/or standardized test results, and others take a comprehensive look at a number of variables. Using one of the most respected of those, called Scholaroo, North Carolina’s public school system ranks forty-fourth (44^th) out of the 50 states.^[4]  Perhaps not surprisingly, our per-capita funding for students positions us even lower, at forty-eighth (48^th)^[5] out of 50.

In most cases, this low academic performance rating is not caused by the teachers. It is the physical, legal, and organizational climate within which they have to operate.

Our new newsletter will provide brief weekly narratives about increase student learning through management strategies or non-instructional initiatives conceived and successfully implemented by schools across America. These efforts include initiatives that lower absenteeism, improve student diets, help school nurses be more effective, enhance buildings and transportation (and many more areas) that ultimately facilitate learning, and improves a school systems statewide ranking.

In a section of this website (on the right) called Available Funding for Solutions, we also will introduce you to potential funding and/or techniques to enable you to support your teachers while working within your skimpy budget.

All writing is done by humans, and all cited facts are footnoted  for you to check the sources.

We look forward to contributing to your success.

Francis P. Koster Ed.D

 

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2020/2020024.pdf. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/NC/PST045222  https://publicschoolsfirstnc.org/resources/fact-sheets/nc-public-ed-at-a-glance/.  https://scholaroo.com/report/state-education-rankings/https://ballotpedia.org/.  https://edlawcenter.org/research/making-the-grade-2022.html.