North Carolina, February 2013
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Race to the Top Progress Update
Sub-criterion
Part B: In preparation for monthly calls, States must submit written responses to the following
questions for two application sub-criteria (e.g. (A)(2) and (D)(4)). 1 All responses in this section
should be tailored to the goals and projects associated with this sub-criterion.
Application sub-criterion

(B)(3): Supporting the Transition to Enhanced Standards and High-Quality Assessments

(D)(5): Providing Effective Support to Teachers and Principals
North Carolina’s self-described goals for this sub-criterion
(B)(3):
North Carolina will work in partnership with its LEAs and charter schools to:
1. Build and reinforce educator and stakeholder support of the new standards and belief
that the new standards will improve student outcomes.
o Develop and publish a communication schedule that identifies opportunities to
build knowledge among teachers, staff, and administrators.
2. Ensure educator mastery of the standards and provide educators with the necessary
tools to translate that knowledge into student outcomes.
o Identify, evaluate, and (as needed) develop professional development on the
new standard course of study and related assessment.
o Develop and disseminate instructional resources to help educators develop a
deep understanding of the new standards in an effort to increase student
outcomes, such as sharing classroom examples/video vignettes that focus on
the CCSS mathetical practices and the ELA shifts , which are posted at
http://www.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/
o Collaborate with local districts in the development of Learning
Experiences/Lesson Plan examples by doing statewide training on the use of
the Tri-State Quality Rubric based on the EQUIP project model
3. As part of instituting a comprehensive assessment approach, ensure that stakeholders
understand and use summative tests and summative test data effectively and
appropriately.
4. Support meaningful use of test data and help educators and students transition to
using online testing.
o Develop and publish an online assessment Best Practices Guide.
5. Align high school exit criteria and college entrance requirements
1
On each monthly call, program officers and states should work together to select two sub-criteria for the following month.
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D5:
1. Create, train, and support a cadre of teacher and principal professional development
leaders to establish sustainable professional development capacity statewide.
2. Provide professional development training and coaching for educators (onsite and
remote) throughout the 8 regions of the state supporting the transition to the new
standards, data literacy, NC Educator Evaluation System, and the Instructional
Improvement System.
3. Find, design and/or develop resources (for workshops, professional learning
communities, virtual courses, webinars, etc.) to support effective professional
activities, with the capacity to create additional resources as needed.
4. Develop a statewide leadership development program for existing administrators.
Relevant projects
B3:

Assist educators in the transition to new standards and assessments

Provide professional development opportunities on the new standards and
assessments (partially, as relevant to (B)(3)), such as training of media specialists
regarding the CCSS for Literarcy

Develop instructional support tools on the new standards and assessments, such as
resource inventories for the CCSS for Literacy and Instructional Improvement System
(partially, as relevant to (B)(3))

Execute the Professional Development Calendar through the Professional
Development Initiative (PDI) Team and Conduct ongoing needs assessments (Fidelity
Support sessions)

Conduct planning institutes for LEA Leadership Teams (Summer Institutes)

Support and maintain the use of online learning opportunities through the
development of e-Learning modules and resources

Facilitate the Distinguished Leadership in Practice Institutes
D5:
Questions:
1. Is the State on-track to implement the activities and meet the goals and performance
measures that are included in its approved scope of work for this sub-criterion? If so,
explain why. If not, explain why not.
The State continues to make strong progress toward meeting the goals and performance
measures listed above and in its Race to the Top application. An update on the projects for
B3 and D5 appears below.
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Communication
The NC Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) continues to provide a monthly ecalendar and a weekly newsletter to stakeholders to keep them informed of RttT efforts,
deliverables, and the benefits of the new standards. Resources shared by external partners
such as Achieve and CCSSO are shared through the weekly newsletters. All of the Standards
work is communicated to the field as a component of the overall READY initiative.
Development/Provision of Resources & Tools
NCDPI also continues, as part of the effort to develop and implement Home Base, to identify
and develop curriculum resources that will be provided through Home Base’s Instructional
Improvement System (IIS) components . NCDPI has established an IIS LEA Resource
Consortium to help address this need. NCDPI provided the Consortium with training on the
Tri-State Quality rubric and the OER (Open Education Resource) rubric to help the
Consortium be better prepared to identify high quality LEA-created content-specific learning
activities, concept-based/curriculum units, and other instructional materials. NCDPI has also
provided various internal staff with this training.
The PDI team will also be heavily involved in the development of the Professional
Development (PD) and Educator Evaluation (EE) components of Home Base as those
systems are developed and deployed this summer.
Year-Round Calendar of Regional Professional Development (PD)
Face-to-Face PD: Summer Institutes
NCDPI completed six Summer Institute trainings across the state of North Carolina in July
2012. As in Summer of 2011, the 2012 Institutes served as the kickoff of a year-round cycle
(described in next section below) of professional development for local teams. Plans are under way for Summer Institutes in 2013. This will be NCDPI’s third round of
intensive, blended professional development sponsored by Race to the Top (RttT) for LEAs
and charter schools (Attachment 3 and 4). The focus for this year’s Summer Institutes will be
“Building District and School-level Leadership Capacity to Change Teacher Practice and
Student Outcomes.” Based on feedback from the RttT Evaluation team, Summer Institutes
2013 will offer eight regional training sessions, a menu of topic-based sessions, and
opportunities for districts and schools to network and participate in facilitated discussions
(Attachment 5). Summer Institutes’ content will continue to support the transition to the new
NC Standard Course of Study (including extensive resource overviews), the North Carolina
Educator Evaluation System (NCEES), the State Accountability System and Data Literacy
(Attachment 6). Summer Institutes 2013 will feature an introduction to Home Base, NC’s
statewide, instructional improvement (IIS) and student information system (SIS) for teachers,
students, parents and administrators. All local districts and RttT charter schools should plan
to send representatives (Attachment 7). Additional information about Summer Institutes
2013 can be found at http://www.ncpublicschools.org/profdev/summerinstitutes/2013/.
Face-to-Face PD:Three-tier Model of Support
In addition to the Summer Institutes, NCDPI offers a three-tier model of support to help
districts and schools understand and implement the Common Core State Standards and the
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North Carolina Essential Standards (together, the new NC Standard Course of Study).
Through this three-tier model, NCDPI provides continuous year-round training sessions,
structured capacity-building activities, site interviews, and formative discussions with local
district and school leadership teams that create opportunities for State and local PD Leaders
to review evidence of each district’s work and ensure that effective and appropriate
professional development is available to all teachers.
Tier 1 Support involves regionally-based training, which is part of the 2012-13 PD calendar
of trainings and workshops (see http://www.ncpublicschools.org/profdev/calendar/) delivered
in collaboration with the Regional Education Service Alliances (RESAs). The calendar
presents over 250 offerings that include trainings on curriculum standard areas of the NC
Standard Course of Study; Data Literacy; NC Educator Evaluation System; EVAAS; 21st
Century classrooms; ACT, PLAN, and EXPLORE; Fidelity Support; and sessions targeted
for colleges and university staff (Attachment 1). Particularly important are the “Fidelity
Support” sessions (Fall sessions were conducted between October and November 2012) that
center around evaluating effective professional development and cross-district collaboration.
Each district populated a pre-survey through a district Google doc prior to attending the
session that identified their strengths and challenge areas, and assessed their ability to write
SMART goals. During the session, districts were expected to share evidences of successes
and connect directly with those districts or schools showing progress in areas they could
glean best practices from. Teams were expected to develop SMART goals for areas they
plan to work on and captured in a district Google doc for follow up by the regional PD
Leaders. Spring Fidelity Support sessions are scheduled for March and April 2013. Planning
is occurring now and these sessions will connect to the agenda for Summer Institutes 2013.
Additional formative support sessions, not presented on the aforementioned calendar, have
also been initiated by each Regional PD Leader team and certain C&I staff members
throughout the year. Access to those calendars, contact information, and training resources
are housed on regional wikispaces pages located at
http://rt3nc.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/Regional+Wikispaces and actual power points and
presentation materials can be found at http://www.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/
Tier 2 Support involves NCDPI staff working directly with school district staff to help plan
“redelivery” of the regionally based training provided by the State to local PD leadership
teams. These sessions are generally held virtually and rely heavily on NCDPI staff sharing
NCDPI-created PD materials.
Finally, Tier 3 Support involves NCDPI staff providing face to face training for school
districts in greatest need. Tier 3 support is generally focused on the schools and districts
working with NC DPI’s District and School Transformation Division.
Online and Blended PD
Based on feedback from the RttT Evaluation team, the state has developed a new, strategic,
and cohesive plan to further the use of effective online and blended professional development
statewide to support and maintain the use of online learning opportunities through the
development of e-Learning modules and resources. This plan includes providing
significantly more opportunities for online peer interaction across all online professional
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development offerings and organizing the online resources into a centralized, easily
searchable content repository, to make them more easily accessible.
NCDPI currently has 16 online professional development modules available for district use
as of June 30, 2012. There are 12 online modules currently in development and scheduled
for release to LEAs and Charter Schools by June 30, 2013 (Attachment 2 and 2a). All online
modules are currently housed in NC Education and at Learn NC, our current established elearning partnerships. A new splash page was recently developed that directs you to all of
the NCDPI online modules and features a wealth of information about the modules for users
(https://www.rt3nc.org/).
Modules are designed to be implemented in a variety of ways. We recommend professional
learning communities (PLCs), whether online, offline, or in a hybrid format, and teachers can
use the modules for self-directed learning. The NCDPI Implementation Guide offers
suggestions for managing each of these options. Additionally, NCDPI introduced statewide
facilitator-led modules to districts this year. We have offered four sections (a six-week
course) of The North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards facilitator-led module
between September 2012 and January 2013 with over 125 educators enrolled. Registration is
now open for two additional sections of this module scheduled for February and April 2013.
Additionally, Connecting With Our 21st Century Learners will be a new facilitator-led
module that will launch two course sections (a five-week course) in February and April 2013.
Registration is now open with 70 reserved slots for these two sections and over 30 educators
are already registered for this course. NCDPI also continues to provide quarterly webinars for each content area. These webinars
provide educators from across the state with a 90 minute session that allows for 60 minutes
of presentation on key concerns regarding the new content standards and 30 minutes of
questions and answers. These webinars are also used to collect topics of concern that can be
used to create additional professional development opportunities. A total of 38 webinars will
be provided during the 2012-2013 school year and all materials are posted at
http://www.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/. Wikispaces still proves to be a very successful tool the
State has implemented for access to materials and providing structure and guidance to LEAs
and Charter Schools before, during, and after trainings. The revised menu of NCDPI
Wikispaces available can be found at http://wikicentral.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/.
Distinguished Leadership in Practice (DLP) Program
The DLP program continues to provide leadership development to principals and assistant
principals, now totaling over 800 participants. A culminating event for the last graduating
cohort will occur in March of 2013 and accomplishments will be highlighted. Data collected
from DLP participants find the program to be very beneficial and aligned to their day-to-day
work. Most participants value the blended approach to learning and find the connection to
the NC Standards for School Executives most relative. The RttT Evaluation team will
transition this year to seek to assess the impact the program has on the culture and climate of
achievement, as well as on student performance, at participating principals’ schools. While
student outcomes will be the primary focus, the report also will examine the impact on school
culture and climate, including teacher working conditions in the areas discussed above. The
evaluation also will benefit from surveying participants some time after they have completed
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the program, which may allow them to better report on how they applied what they learned,
as well as on any related issues they encountered (taken from DLP Report, May 2012, p. 6).
The State is in the development stages of offering both a Superintendent’s Academy (Next
Generation Superintendents Development Program: Building Transformational Leaders) and
an Administrative Cohort to support the digital transformation of teaching and learning
within their schools (Leadership for Creating Next Generation Schools) through our
partnership with the NC Association of School Administrators (NCASA). These programs
will provide additional support for great leadership across the state in areas we have not
highlighted in the past.
2. Does the State have evidence indicating the quality of implementation for this subcriterion? What is/has the State doing/done as a result of this information?
Professional Development Initiative (PDI) and other Support for Teachers & Principals
The State believes that the PDI and provision of other support resources for teachers and
principals has been strong and effective.
Data in the latest PD report from the RttT Evaluation team (January 2013) indicate that the
overall quality of the Annual Professional Development Cycle events for the 2011-12 school
year was high. Data from Summer Institutes 2012 indicate most surveyed participants agreed
or strongly agreed that the Summer Institute had clear objectives (94%), was relevant to their
professional development needs (90%), was well structured (90%), was of high quality
overall (88%), built upon previous professional development efforts (87%), was engaging
(86%), and met their expectations (85%). Most (90-95%) also noted the effective integration
of online resources (Corn, et.al, p. 5).
The January 2013 report also indicated that there is a clear set of priorities for professional
development, as identified through NCDPI-RESA Fidelity Support sessions, pre-Summer
Institute surveys, and data and findings from the First Annual Evaluation Report for RttT
Professional Development. Providing adequate time and resources to meet the identified PD
needs remains a challenge at both the State and LEA levels, but NCDPI is creating many
opportunities for teachers and principals to deepen their knowledge and receive expert
support.
In 2011-12, DPI provided a total of 938 hours of professional development during the
Annual Professional Development Cycle related to the four RttT priorities: (1) successful
transition to the new standards (573 hours); (2) implementation of formative and summative
assessments (146 hours); (3) use of data to support instruction (24 hours); and (4) effective
utilization of the North Carolina Educator Evaluation System (195 hours) (Corn, et.al, p.4-5).
NCDPI has also continued to add to the resources available for teacher and principal use both
in training sessions and asynchronously/at teacher’s discretion. In response to findings in the
August 2012 PD Evaluation report, we continue to add videos and resources to our inter-rater
reliability training sessions, which will occur face to face and virtually (see entire NCEES
wikispace at http://ncees.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/NCEES+Wiki; an example of videos are
available at http://ncees.ncdpi.wikispaces.net/MET+Videos). Last summer’s online interrater reliability webinar pilot series, which was a foundation for this work, did prove to be
successful and has continued through this fall and spring.
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DLP Program
The RttT Evaluation Team has completed its first evaluation of the Distinguished Leadership
in Practice (DLP) program as of May 2012 and the feedback is positive. Data indicates that
almost all participants (95% to 100%, depending on the objective) indicated they were
satisfied or very satisfied that the specific learning objectives had been accomplished, and
only a small fraction of respondents indicated that they were either only somewhat satisfied
or not satisfied. Results from the participant survey show that most of the principals agreed
or strongly agreed that they developed specific knowledge (87% to 95%) and skills (86% to
98%) targeted by DLP. Focus group results also provide evidence that participants acquired
knowledge and skills—from the facilitators as well as from each other—that will help them
become better leaders (Maxfield, et. al, p. 5).
3. What obstacles and/or risks could impact the State’s ability to meet its goals and
performance measures related to this sub-criterion?
Overall, the State is still on-track to meet all goals and achieve high-quality implementation.
Several relatively minor challenges are worth noting here.
NCDPI believes that the activity under the B3 goal of creating pacing guides should be
adjusted. NCDPI is recommending that the State work with districts to create alternative
instructional resources (such as curriculum maps or instructional focus calendars) rather than
only producing pacing guides. Alternative resources model ways to spread the teaching of
common standards over the course of a school year. Pacing guides, on the other hand, can
sometimes be too regimented (e.g., specifying which standard to teach on which day) and
thus work counter to the thematic and integrated approaches that underlie the Common Core.
The alternative resources would thus align more closely with the intent of the new standards
and provide teachers and districts with alternative ways to visualize the teaching of the
curriculum across a school year that encourage collaboration and innovation. Two challenges to meeting NC’s D5 goals are hiring/retention and timing/coordination:

Hiring continues to be a challenge, especially at this point in the grant; however, we
are now faced with retaining the quality staff we have had over the last few years
through the conclusion of the grant. Our plan to initiate a few short-term, projectbased contracts that will supplement the support provided by the current statewide
Regional PD Leaders support structure will soon go into effect. We will post those
positions in the next two weeks. They will provide support to regions in the areas of
fidelity for educator evaluation processes, face-to-face instructional coaching for
administrators, and the facilitation of future instructor-led online modules developed
by NCDPI.

Since Home Base will be the ultimate portal for all of the resources being developed
by the PDI and a key focus of PDI will need to be training and supporting school
personnel in how to use Home Base tools, the Home Base timeline has created some
planning challenges. We are now in a position to discuss how our online modules
and other resources will will transfer to Home Base and we continue to carefully
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design our current resources and modules in expectation of Home Base. Beyond
Summer Institute 2013, which will focus on use of the Home Base tools that will be
available at that time, training for schools personnel may need to take place in 201415, currently outside the scope of the USED-approved plan.
Evaluation: Based on the responses to the previous question, evaluate the State’s performance
and progress to date for this sub-criterion (choose one):
2
Red (1) Orange (2) Yellow (3) Green (4) 2
(updated January 2012) Red – substantially off-track and/or has significant quality concerns; urgent and decisive action is
required; Orange –off-track and/or there are quality concerns; many aspects require significant attention; Yellow –generally ontrack and of high or good quality; only a few aspects require additional attention; Green – on-track with high quality.
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