An estimated 16,000 kids dropped out of school in North Carolina last year. That’s a slight improvement from the year before, but it’s clear that much more needs to be done to make school a welcoming and academically challenging place for many of the state’s students. Join host Frank Stasio and UNC-TV’s Heather Burgiss for a special conversation about how to keep kids in the classroom. This program was recorded before a studio audience at UNC-TV with a panel of education experts including June Atkinson, State Superintendent of Public Instruction; New Hanover High School Principal Todd Finn; Joel Rosch, Senior Research Scholar at Duke University’s Center for Child & Family Policy; and Karolyn Tyson, associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of “Integration Interrupted: Tracking, Black Students, and Acting White After Brown” (Oxford University Press/2011).
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.