CBS News is friggin’ wacked (grossly misinformed) about North Carolina’s Learn and Earn program. In this report, Lee Cowan drools over North Carolina’s “revolutionary” high school reforms, calling it high school reform “on steroids” and declaring high schools to be a thing of the past.
Let’s be honest. The high school reform ideas implemented by the state did not spring from the head of Governor Easley, as the report leads one to believe. The idea has made the rounds at a National Governors Association meeting a few years ago, and in 2003, I heard a speech at the University of Virginia by then Governor Warner about a high school reform proposal almost identical to the Learn and Earn program. Lastly, without financial support from the Gates Foundation, I am not sure that North Carolina would have much of a Learn and Earn program at all.
Easley deserves credit for convincing legislators that this program is a critical component to a successful public school system, even though he has no empirical evidence that it has been successful in North Carolina. Research on similar schools nationwide found mixed results, and I suspect that the same will be true in North Carolina. I have only heard of one revolution that achieved mixed results.
A more interesting question is this: will the Learn and Earn schools be subject to the same kind of scrutiny as charter schools are? Will Learn and Earn schools be capped at 100? Will poor-performing Learn and Earn schools be shut down? Will Helen Ladd take the time to analyze academic outcomes in Learn and Earn schools? Or do Learn and Earn schools enjoy protection from the governor in a way that charter schools do not?
