In December it was revealed that behind the scenes, legislators, education officials, think tanks and various non-profits we holding closed-door meetings at SAS, which were being organized by the SAS tied Education non-profit, BEST NC. [Read: BEST NC’s 2020 Vision Initiative]
This series of meetings, held out of the public eye, had a goal of producing a set of ‘topline recommendations’ for education in North Carolina. These recommendations, known as the “Vision 2020 Initiative” were to be rolled out sometime at the end of January according to conversations I had with various participants and with the CEO of BEST NC, Brenda Berg.
January came and went and February is now upon us. I’ve been keeping an eye on the BEST NCsite, but didn’t see the report anywhere. The “2020 Vision Initiative” report emerged yesterday — on the EducationNC site. The report itself, however, hangs off of BEST NC’s site. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on it once I dig into it.
The EducationNC site wants feedback on the line items and also has an array of links of which one is a survey where people to give their ‘feedback’ on it. I encourage parents to do so, especially on one of the priorities of the BEST NC report:
“Build a first-rate early childhood workforce”
“early childhood workforce”
You gotta be kidding me.
The milestones in it are all test related.
There is a vast list of stakeholders, which include Common Core Academic Standards Review members Olivia Oxendine and Ann Clark. Given who backs BEST NC and the long list of Common Core players in the stakeholder list, this represents a conflict of interest with the work being done on the ASRC.
All of these stakeholders are business community members, legislators, think tanks/non-profits or educrats. There is not a single parent on it that is just a regular citizen — and THEY are the ultimate stakeholders. We get to give our feedback in a survey after the fact.
By the way, the survey? The format is poor for true feedback, and I think I’m being kind there. It has multiple bullet points for each section, yet you can only put in one overall selection as your answer. See the first page here for an example. Be careful how you answer.
If there was doubt before EducationNC is a PR site, let that doubt be removed as one sees the tagline at the bottom of the report announcement:
“Editor’s Note: BEST NC is a supporter of EdNC.”
*This article has been updated
LL1885 
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When you read the rest of the survey, it’s pretty clear that we are NOT building a workforce of child laborers, but rather people who are teaching young kids.
4. E1. Build a first-rate early childhood workforce.
E1.1. Improve educator preparation and continuous development.
E1.2. Reward and retain top early learning talent, such as by committing to more competitive compensation that reflects the enormous impact these educators have on children’s future success, and helps to improve retention among the best.
E1.3. Support strong early childhood administrators, such as by gathering more information about support gaps for early childhood administrators, as well as ensuring elementary school principals are highly-trained in the importance of early literacy.
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Yes, I caught that and amended it accordingly – Thanks. I think the emphasis on early childhood is good in some ways, but given the report basically hangs its hat on testing, it has that ‘cradle to grave’/all your kids are belong to us feel.
Also, the way these are laid out? E1.3, E1.1… reminds me a lot of Common Core. The survey BEST wants done? You can only give your opinion overall on a topic with multiple items laid out under it. That’s a seriously flawed survey.
Which one of the stakeholders on the list were you, by the way?
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