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Slated to last four months, the project will use the money to keep a close watch on past and ongoing efforts in other school systems around the country. Researching various national procedures will help CMS measure its own efforts and aid in developing a working model to target change in the 10 achievement zone schools.
The district’s achievement zone, scheduled to take effect at the start of the 2007-08 school year, currently consists of the new Eight-PLUS Academy for rising ninth-graders struggling with math and reading skills; Garinger, E.E. Waddell, West Charlotte and West Mecklenburg high schools; Martin Luther King Jr., Sedgefield, Bishop Spaugh Community Academy and Wilson middle schools; and Billingsville and Shamrock Gardens elementary schools.

As the nation’s 22nd-largest school district, CMS continues to garner accolades for reducing achievement gaps and elevating academic standards. In 2006, 90 percent of CMS fifth-graders were reading on grade level; and over the past decade, the number of African-American students reading at the appropriate level jumped nearly 50 percent. These contributed to magnified national monitoring of CMS’s procedures and administration’s efforts toward meeting student needs.

CMS leaders estimate that the district’s merger with the consulting firm will further extend progress toward increased student achievement. “The Parthenon Group has a proven track record of success in public and private business,” said CMS Superintendent Peter Gorman. “It has public education expertise and the ability to leverage national and international efforts to help our students and our schools succeed.”

The effort to build a model for achievement is intended to align with CMS’s goal of decentralization and will facilitate efforts to provide increased authority to local schools and their designated decision makers. The grant will not allocate funds directly to schools or classrooms.

Decentralization plan dishes out heavy homework load for superintendents
The 2007-08 school year within Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will reflect some boundary shifting as the school system carves out new communities, but this time it is administrators rather than students who will find themselves reallocated. Superintendent Peter Gorman announced at a June 6 press conference that Mecklenburg County’s six designated learning communities will be captained by candidates assigned to steer CMS in a less centralized, more district-focused direction.

The learning communities include the Central Learning Community led by Joel Ritchie, who will serve 40 schools and 24,000 students; the East Learning Community led by Independence High School’s principal, Nancy Bartles, who will serve 24 schools and nearly 25,000 students; the North Learning Community piloted by Hugh Hattabaugh, who will serve 16 schools with 20,000 students; the Northeast Learning Community directed by Scott Muri, who will lead 24 schools with a total of 21,500 students; and the West Learning Community led by Elva Cooper, who will serve 23 schools totaling 21,000 students.

A seventh area, deemed the achievement zone, was assigned to Curtis Carroll and includes the 10 designated high-priority schools and the area’s new Eight-PLUS Academy.

The plan, initially unveiled last February to better attain decentralization, was called for by the Board of Education in its Theory of Action for Improved Student Achievement. The plan outlined a design for CMS to tightly align area schools with their correlating communities. Gorman and the board hope the learning communities will put recourses and administration in closer proximity to CMS parents. The communities were designed using high school feeder patterns and municipal and neighborhood boundaries, as well as growth projections. These growth estimates are expected to endure for at least four years in order to nurture stability regardless of population surges.

Although decentralization does not have a direct impact on student achievement, the plan aims to give teachers and principals increased flexibility by bringing recourses a little closer home, thus ensuring a heightened response time to the area’s needs.

Each of the superintendents will have an office within his or her assigned community, equipped with an executive director and support staff to better meet the area’s individual needs. All six superintendents will report to Chief Academic Officer Ruth Perez, who in turn reports to Gorman. CMS plans to open all six learning communities by July 1.