Here is some excellent news about some of our highest-achieving high school students. The state Board of Education heard just how well they are doing earlier this month. A record number of high schoolers are both taking and passing Advanced Placement exams, with an increase of more than 7 percent taking the rigorous tests and a whopping 21 percent increase in their passing rate. In a state that has fallen behind in educational achievement and funding, it is notable that North Carolina’s passing rate on AP exams, 72 percent, is 2 points above the national average.
Passing AP exams gives students a good chance of being accepted to the schools of their choice, along with providing earned college credits.
Said the proud director of the Office of Advanced Learning and Gift Education, “It’s a clear reflection when students are given an opportunity, they rise.”
The good news is widespread.
This school year, nearly 100 thousand North Carolina students have signed up to take Advanced Placement courses, a 33 percent increase in a decade. That growth has come in all 8 state education regions, including Western North Carolina, where many students are still contending with damage from Hurricane Helene a year ago.
As always, though, legislative danger lurks.
The General Assembly has been unable to approve a budget and has threatened to cut funding for students to take AP exams, limiting who is able to take the exams.
What on earth are legislators thinking?!?!!?
More thoughts on the education front.
With the skyrocketing cost of higher education, many families have urged their students to take a direction track—a community college trade program, an apprenticeship of some sort, or taking a well-paying job straight out of high school.
Not everyone wants to or should go to college or pursue a university degree. That said, it is important to remember and to factor into any educational decision the reality that college graduates will earn significantly more money over their careers than high school graduates.
Social Security Administration research finds that a man with a college degree will earn $900,000 more than his high school graduate counterpart. The numbers are lower for women (what else is new?), but they show a similar discrepancy. A woman with a bachelor's degree will earn $630,000 more over her lifetime than her high school graduate friend.
Graduate degrees for both men and women make an even larger difference, with men earning $1.5 million and women earning $1.1 million more than high school graduates.
Food for thought and for long-term planning.
Anyone who has set foot in Cape Fear Valley Medical Center knows that Cumberland County residents are hardly the only people seeking health care there. It and its level 3 trauma center draw patients from all over southeastern North Carolina.
Its ER is ranked the 18th busiest in the nation, ahead of Massachusetts General in Boston.
A main driver of this is the ongoing demise of small hospitals in rural areas, including eastern North Carolina. Since 2005, 11 rural NC hospitals have closed or significantly curtailed services, making us 3rd in the nation in this sad statistic. Financial pressures from declining and low-income/unemployed populations, fewer medical personnel in rural areas, and dependence on low reimbursement government health insurance programs are fueling the decline.
The coming Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine—whew!—is expected to ease the situation in our part of the state just as the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University has done in that region, but with the first class of medical students entering in 2026, it will be years before any of them hang out their shingles. Fingers crossed that many do so here and as soon as possible.