Prior State of the Month

June 2008: North Carolina

Aligning Standards and Evaluations for 21st Century Teaching, Learning,

and Leading

North Carolina is completing an exciting initiative which aligns educator practices with 21st century teaching and learning by creating new standards and evaluation instruments for superintendents, principals, teachers, preservice teachers, and candidates for masters of school administration.  Based on the mission and goals of the  NC State Board of Education:  Future Ready Students for the 21st Century and criteria established by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the new standards and aligned evaluation instruments for principals and teachers reflect the complexity of leading and teaching in the 21st century.  These new standards reflect the important role of teacher leadership, teamwork and collaboration, higher order thinking, authentic assessment, and technology-infused learning in a 21st century education. When fully implemented, these new standards will move North Carolina educators to a new level in their professional careers. 

In developing the evaluation instruments to accompany these new standards, data from the annual North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey became a critical artifact.  The 2008 Teacher Working Conditions Survey was completed by over 104,000 educators (87%).  Building on this and previous years’ surveys, evaluation instruments for teachers and principals were developed by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) as growth documents based directly on the new standards.

Extending this alignment work even further, Schools of Education across North Carolina are currently re-visioning their programs so that candidates for licensure in teaching and/or administration will be proficient in the same standards on which they will be assessed as practicing educators.  These standards and evaluation instruments, applied to both pre-service and in-service teachers, will create a new paradigm that will enable teaching and leading to adapt to the needs of the 21st century.

North Carolina’s timeline for implementation is ambitious.  The principal evaluation instrument will be in place on July 1, 2008 -- all principals will be trained in its use prior to that date.  The Teacher Evaluation Instrument will be rolled out in phases with thirteen districts participating in the 2008-2009 school year.  Remaining districts will be phased in over the next two years.  Schools of Education will submit their plans for revisioning by July 2009 for implementation in 2010-2011, the first year that every school will use the teacher instrument.  

Information on the North Carolina Standards for Superintendents, the North Carolina Standards for School Executives, and the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards are available at www.ncptsc.org.  Teaching Condition reports for schools in North Carolina are available at www.ncteachingconditions.org.