Perdue focuses on higher education

GRANTSBORO — Gov. Beverly Perdue said to a gathering of education and community leaders from across Eastern North Carolina on Thursday that neither her mom nor her dad had a high school diploma, but there was never any doubt in her mind that she would get her degree.

The governor used herself as an example of what she wants for all students in the state as she spoke to a crowd that half-filled a 650-person capacity auditorium at Pamlico Community College.

She said she wants all students to graduate from high school ready to go on to a two-year or four-year college or university, or with the skills they need to enter the work world.

Perdue said her father was a coal miner, and her mother quit school in ninth grade to go to work so her siblings could stay in school. They did without, she said, so she and her brother could get an education.

“It was not acceptable in my house to talk about anything other than going on to community college or college,” Perdue said. “That’s the way we should be brought up, and that’s the way every student in this state should be brought up.”

Her address delivered Thursday was similar to the one entitled “Career and College, Ready, Set, Go!” delivered to education officials from across the state in Kannapolis in January.

Pamlico County Schools Superintendent James P. Coon said he had heard the governor’s address at that time and wrote a proposal to draw leaders and the public from a five-county area to hear her message.

 “The importance, again, is to reconnect the value of what we do everyday in the classroom to the economic growth and development for North Carolina,” Coon said.

Perdue’s plan for achieving her goals for career and college readiness included having students be “ready from the start” by having young children enrolled in early childhood programs such as More at Four or Smart Start, and then ensuring they have foundational math, reading and writing skills by the end of the third grade.

She said teachers should have the technology to be able to track their students’ progress in those grades and to allow them to identify at-risk students early on.

She said students should be “set for success” in high school by having education officials ensure they’re making progress toward a clear definition of what they need to succeed in the business world and in college. They should be “ready to go” in graduating from high school and getting the college degrees they set out to receive.

“In this state I believe, and I hope you believe, that every kid has a birth right education because that’s the ticket to a future that works,” Perdue said.

For Ben Casey, director of communications and marketing for Pamlico Community College, the key to Perdue’s message was her comments on college readiness.

Perdue said that of the approximately 71 percent of students who graduate from high school, about 50 percent who go on to college have to receive remediation.

Casey teaches a remedial algebra class that the students have to pass before they can start working toward their college degrees. He said students should be prepared for college when they leave high school.

 “Since I teach remedial algebra, this issue is on the front burner for me,” he said. “It’s costing them time and money, too.”

Jones County Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bracy said the school system is on target with Perdue’s goal of teachers having the technology to track elementary school students’ success. The system tests kindergarten through second grade students using software loaded onto Palm handheld devices, Bracy said.

He added that he believes in her vision for college as well as career readiness, and it’s important to prepare students for community college or work if that’s where they want to be.

“I think overall we’ve got to have that goal of high expectations, but we’ve got to be realistic,” he said. “It’s got to be what they want as well.”

Craven County Schools Superintendent Larry Moser said he supports Perdue’s vision, and the district is working to graduate as many students as it can from high school. The district’s dropout rate has declined for the past four years, he said, and last year’s rate was its lowest in 10 years.

“We are doing as much as we can to stress the importance for all kids to not just graduate from high school and achieve a high school diploma, but also to attend post-secondary education,” he said.

Laura Oleniacz can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at loleniacz@freedomenc.com.