Education

A North Carolina school district has been recognized as the top urban school district in the country. Charlotte-Mecklenburg won the award, given by a prominent and controversial foundation.

The Broad Foundation is one of the largest dedicated to public school reform. It runs an academy to train non-educators to become superintendents and places a high priority on market-based competition and test-based accountability.

Peter Gorman was the superintendent in Charlotte and is a Broad Academy graduate, as is Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata.

The future of the state's residential schools for the deaf and blind will be the subject of a series of public hearings this month.

Families and other interested people will gather tonight in Morganton, the site of one of North Carolina's three residential schools for the deaf and blind. Until this summer, those schools were managed by the state department of health and human services. The legislature transferred oversight to the Department of Public Instruction over the summer, cut the budget, and told DPI to recommend the closing of one of the schools.

The Chancellor at North Carolina Central will play a key role at a White House event next week. Charlie Nelms will lead a town hall at the annual conference of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Police at UNC-Chapel Hill are now using a GPS to track stolen bicycles on campus. Under the strategy implemented this week, officers plant a tracking device on a so-called "bait bike," and then follow the signal if it leaves a certain boundary. Police at N-C State started using the device last November. Deputy chief Jon Barnwell says his department started seeing immediate results.