College level courses popular with North Carolina high school students

By Alan Wooten | The Center Square

file graphic | the Shelby Independent

Education – Fifty-four percent of North Carolina public school high school graduates passed at least one-college level course while still in high school, education officials said Thursday.

“For those who have been around a moment and have gray hair or less hair, understand the magnitude of that number, that percentage,” first-term Democratic Superintendent Mo Green told members of the state school board. “This, my friends, is amazing. That’s why I say to all who are involved in our public schools in North Carolina, take a bow.”

The new statistics on high school students completing college courses are the latest in a string of good numbers that reflect on the improving performance of North Carolina public schools, Green told the board.

(College classes continued below local advertisements)

“Go tell it on the mountain,” the superintendent said. “Tell it to your friends, your church members, your family.”

The goal is for North Carolina public schools to be the best in the nation, Green said.

“We are the best that we have ever been and that puts us at a really great place,” he told the board. “We’re at a tipping point.”

There was a time when only the top students could take college classes in high school, the superintendent said.

“We have reached the point now where over half of our students are doing so,” he added. “We are at that tipping point where we ought to be able to say, “Why are you not doing it?"

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Alan Wooten has been a publisher, general manager and editor. His work has won national or state awards in every decade since the 1980s. He’s a proud graduate of Elon University and Farmville Central High in North Carolina.

The Shelby Independent.