Research and Evaluation Team

In order to better understand the current state of the Arlington Public Schools' 1:1 program transition, the district partnered with the Friday Institute Research and Evaluation (FIRE) team at North Carolina State University to conduct a small-scale study. The purpose of the study was to identify implementation successes and challenges and to signal opportunities for program growth moving forward.

This report tells the story of the development of the Aligning Educational Efforts initiative, which was created to help Alexander, Burke, and Catawba Counties better connect and coordinate education and workforce goals across their region. The John M. Belk Endowment commissioned this report to capture lessons learned from that experience and to provide guidance for other North Carolina communities that want to develop similar plans for their regions. While some of the strategies and lessons learned highlighted in this report are specific to conditions in the region for which the plan was developed, we believe that many of them will be useful in a wide array of community contexts.

This evaluation report—the fourth and final one commissioned by the North Carolina State Board of Education—summarizes qualitative results from the third year of the initiative and quantitative analyses from the first two years of implementation. In general, most of the qualitative indicators were again positive, and in the areas for which one-year and two-year quantitative estimations were possible there also were continuing signs of positive outcomes.

This case study details the implementation and impact of the Learning Differences program at Manning Elementary School (MES) in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. Section one provides an overview of the Learning Differences program. Section two describes how the Learning Differences program was implemented at MES and how data were collected. Section three draws on qualitative and quantitative data to illustrate the program’s impact on MES teachers and students. Section four discusses the seven key lessons learned from the implementation process. The authors intend for this case study to be a practical resource that schools and districts can reference as they implement their own learning differences initiatives.