Education

One of Raleigh's oldest colleges is making some major changes. Peace College will change its name to William Peace University and admit men for the first time.

The changes are being made to strengthen a college that has taken its lumps of late. Earlier this year, Peace eliminated its music department and laid off a number of faculty members.

The decision to admit men is the latest and most significant change in the school's recent history. In the 1970s the school became a junior college and in the 1990s it awarded its first four-year degree.

School districts released preliminary results on Adequate Yearly Progress today. And the results, as usual, are mixed.

A subsidized housing facility for teachers opens on Hatteras Island today in an effort to lure talent to Dare County schools. The Dare Education Foundation held a ribbon-cutting ceremony this afternoon in Buxton for a building with 12 reduced-rent apartments. The island has two public schools with a total of nearly 600 students. Dare Education Foundation executive director Elizabeth Piff says teachers on Hatteras Island have a hard time finding housing they can afford. As a result, a given class can sometimes have four different teachers in the course of one school year.

A federal prosecutor has charged a former administrator at UNC-Charlotte with falsifying visa records so that international students could stay in the country illegally.

A successful teaching recruitment program is ending after 25 years. The North Carolina Teaching Fellows program provided scholarships to the best and brightest prospective teachers.

UNC-Chapel Hill is taking the largest budget cut in the university system. Chapel Hill will receive 18 percent less funding from the state this year.

Burke County High Schools in western North Carolina will continue to be on probation. The decision by AdvancEd means the district avoids losing accreditation.

Social workers in Cumberland County are contacting high school dropouts this summer in an attempt to bring them back to class. Natasha Scott is the district's executive director of student services. She says her department is looking up every dropout and contacting them individually before the next school year.

Natasha Scott: "What that includes is making phone calls to students and actually going out and making home visits to students. So you always want to keep looking for students and keep working until you work yourself out of a job, essentially."

Judge Howard Manning heard closing statements today in a hearing convened to decide whether the newly passed state budget provides students the kind of education that's constitutionally guaranteed to them.

The races for Wake County School Board are heating up. Five seats are up for grabs in this fall’s election.

Wake County Parents are getting a chance to test drive one of the two proposed student assignment plans.

The Pitt County School Board has voted to require a daily moment of silence for all county schools. Board members passed the proposal earlier this week. It directs teachers to observe up to a minute of silence every morning before instruction begins. Board member Worth Forbes proposed the idea in January. He says the policy creates a consistent way for students to start the school day.

 The State Board of Education voted unanimously on a resolution that sharply criticizes the budget passed by the state senate today. They say it will lead to thousands of teachers and teacher assistants being laid off. 

Officials with Wake County Schools are visiting high schools across the county this week. They are holding public hearings on two very different proposed student assignment plans.

The recession has highlighted the need for a more educated workforce. That's according to "The State of the North Carolina Workforce 2011-2020" report. Kenneth Poole is CEO and President of the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness.

Wayne Early Middle College High School will hold its graduation tonight in Goldsboro. The school is one of many early college high schools graduating students who already have some college credit. 

Rick Wagoner is the new Chair of the Board of Trustees at Duke University. Wagoner is the former CEO at General Motors. 

It was a little more than 2 years ago that Wagoner resigned as CEO at GM after being asked to do so by the White House. During his 13 years in charge of the company, it lost about $85 billion.

Another wave of students is set to graduate from area colleges and universities this weekend. Commencement ceremonies will be held at North Carolina Central, Duke, and NC State. 

Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis will give the commencement address at NC Central on Saturday. Across town and a day later, Duke will hold its graduation. Cisco CEO John Chambers will speak to the Duke graduates.

Many school districts are beginning to lay off teachers and other employees in anticipation of deep budget cuts by lawmakers. A budget plan approved by the state House would cut public education by almost a billion dollars. State senators haven't come up with a final plan yet, but Republican budget writers say they'd like to cut a hundred million dollars more than the House would. Jennifer Tuft is a kindergarten teacher in Randolph County who found out last week that her position will be cut. 

Attorneys with the UNC-Chapel Hill Law School’s Center for Civil Rights say the three separate school districts in Halifax County are inherently unequal. 

Commencement season begins in earnest this weekend, as several area colleges and universities hold graduation. 

UNC - Chapel Hill graduation takes center stage on Sunday morning, as the main university ceremony takes place in Kenan Stadium. Pulitzer Prize-winning entomologist E.O. Wilson will be the commencement speaker.

Federal civil rights investigators are in Raleigh tonight to host a public-comment session on possible violations by the Wake County School system. 

The visit is part of the Department of Education’s investigation into the School Board’s abandonment of socio-economic diversity in its student assignment policy. The complaint that launched the investigation was filed by the North Carolina NAACP and other groups.

High School graduation is right around the corner. Seniors are busy with end of year exams, getting a graduation gown, and getting ready for what comes next.

Nikea Randolph remembers the moment when she decided music was going to be her life.