Education

More than nine months after a UNC Board of Governors committee refused to reappoint a widely respected UNC Law professor to the University of North Carolina Press Board of Governors, the UNC System has released hundreds of pages of email communications Policy Watch requested in connection with the conflict.

After nearly three decades, the Leandro case has yet to produce the remedy the plaintiffs say the constitution requires. Now, the courts will weigh in again Attorney Larry Armstrong has been a part of the state’s landmark Leandro school funding lawsuit for more than 27 years. The attorney for Halifax County Schools filed the original legal challenge in 1994.

Managing Raleigh's Torchlight Academy was a lucrative family venture for Don McQueen. The school paid McQueen nearly $3 million in management fees between 2016 and 2020, financial audits submitted by the school show.  The Raleigh businessman ran the K-8 charter school with a reported 600 students (state officials could only confirm 489 during a recent on-site headcount) through his educational management organization (EMO), Torchlight Academy Schools, LLC.

On Sunday, at the start of a week in which the Florida Senate was scheduled to consider a nationally-watched piece of legislation referred to as “Don’t Say Gay,” the organization Equality Florida posted a statement condemning “homophobic, transphobic” remarks from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary. Christina Pushaw tweeted Friday in support of the bill that would restrict certain conversations on LGBTQ issues in Florida’s public school classrooms. That led to a scathing statement from Equality Florida...

As North Carolina schools experience unprecedented learning loss across all grades, the state is facing another challenge: How to keep and recruit the best and brightest teachers. It is, in large part, those educators who will determine how well North Carolina's school children bounce back academically two years into the pandemic.

NC A&T, NC Central, and Elizabeth City State targeted for significant hikes When the UNC System Board of Governors meets next month, its members will vote on whether to raise the cap on out-of-state admissions to three historically Black college and universities (HBCUs) in the system – North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University and Elizabeth City State University.

State Board of Education is scheduled to consider recommendation to close Raleigh's Torchlight Academy Wednesday afternoon The state Charter School Advisory Board’s recommendation to close Torchlight Academy in Raleigh on Monday represented a dramatic fall from grace for Don McQueen, the owner of the firm managing the 23-year-old school.

"We've known for years what works in public education, but we've allowed our differences and our fears to stand in our way." State Board of Education Chairman Eric Davis told members the House Select Committee on an Education System for North Carolina’s Future last week that the state must rapidly increase the number of skilled professional psychologists, social workers and school counselors to help students after two years of pandemic stresses.

Carolina Alumni Review publisher denies political motives were behind decision to abandon planned investigative report The decision of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's alumni magazine not to publish a story about controversies involving matters of race, tenure and free speech, has prompted many people within and outside the university to wonder whether university pressure played a part in the story’s demise.

The student body president at UNC-Chapel Hill is calling for the removal of a member of the university’s Board of Trustees, who he says interfered in an online debate between candidates for student body president earlier this month. Student Body President Lamar Richards sent a complaint to the UNC System president and chair of the UNC Board of Governors’ University Governance Committee...

When Yvonne Johnson was a young girl in east Greensboro, it was in many ways a different world. She split time between her parents’ house on Beech Street, about a block from N.C. A&T, and her aunt’s place on Market Street, where there were rows of corn on one side and faculty housing on the other.

As Black History Month commences its final week, North Carolina’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities have endured a series of bomb threats leading to closures, disruptions and fear of the sort of hate-based terrorism that the FBI reports is at a 12-year high across America.

Governor, however, expresses skepticism about GOP bill that would remove authority from local school boards Citing improving COVID-19 trends and the availability of effective vaccines, Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday urged school boards to end indoor masking mandates beginning March 7.  The governor made his remarks during an afternoon news conference, where he was flanked by state health officials.

Action comes as part of Biden administration's "borrower defense" initiative WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education announced Wednesday that nearly 16,000 student borrowers would receive millions in loan repayments, after the department found that four private for-profit institutions made misleading claims about their job placement rates.

Conservatives target works dealing with race and LGBTQ themes Parents of sixth graders in a gifted language-arts class at Marvin Ridge Middle School received an email from their children’s teacher last month warning them that a book selected for the class’s unit on African American literature would at times be “uncomfortable.”

Should scientists stand outside of politics or do they have an obligation to engage in political debates around science? Do evolving social rules and mores threaten the teaching of science? Does the politicization of science, particularly in a global pandemic, threaten the public’s trust in it? Those were some of the lofty topics tackled by a panel of experts at Tuesday’s night’s Abbey Speaker Series panel at UNC-Chapel Hill.