Perdue shifts focus to college preparedness

Gov. Beverly Perdue and education leaders met Wednesday to talk about making students better prepared for college and careers.

With a high school dropout rate hovering around 30 percent and about 60percent of entering community college students who are not up to speed, Perdue is looking to her Education Cabinet to have all layers of the state education system work together on remedies.

"If you make headway on this, you will be a great governor," UNC system President Erskine Bowles told Perdue.

The universities have a role in public schools because they educate most of the state's teachers, he said. He suggested education leaders get a list of four or five things each had to do to realize the goal of creating a unified education system.

The state Department of Public Instruction is revamping its curriculum and coming up with new ways to measure student progress.

The Cabinet members, representing public schools, community colleges, and public and private higher education, talked about electronic connections between schools that would enable easier communication and transfer of student data. But full execution of those plans depends on winning federal grants.

The Education Cabinet is operating with staff donated by DPI. Bowles said he could not promise his staff because he was preparing to announce 900 position cuts today.

But Perdue said money was not a barrier to achieving what she called a seamless education system.

"It's not all about money," she said. "There are hundreds of millions of dollars in this system. We can all do more with less."

N.C. judge won't run again

N.C. Court of Appeals Judge Ann Marie Calabria says she will not seek re-election. Wake District Court Judge Jane Gray plans to run for the seat.

Calabria, who has been an appeals court judge since 2002, put a statement on her Web site saying she wants to spend more time with her family and seek other professional opportunities. Before joining the appeals court, she served six years as a Wake District Court judge.

Gray announced Wednesday that she plans to run for Calabria's seat in 2010. She was appointed to the Wake District Court bench by then-Gov. Mike Easley in 2002 and has won election twice. Prior to that she served as legal counsel to House Speaker Jim Black and worked for 19 years in the Attorney General's Office handling civil and criminal appeals.

In 2001, she became the first government attorney to head the Wake County Bar Association.

McHenry's 'czar' problem

U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry says President Barack Obama's special advisers should have to testify before Congress.

It's one of the issues of the moment among conservatives -- that Obama has appointed dozens of special advisers, known as "czars" in his and previous administrations.

The complaint is that Congress has no confirmation authority as it does with Cabinet members. Other presidents have appointed special advisers, but Obama's appointments trouble McHenry, a Cherryville Republican.

"It's apparent they seem to be making some big decisions," McHenry said on Fox News. "The Obama administration has done what previous administrations have done, but they've done it in a much wider way."

The Democratic party is firing back.

"McHenry's hypocrisy is astounding," said Joanne Peters, a regional press secretary for the Democratic National Committee. "Most telling of the credibility of these attacks is that they come from the same Republican Party that didn't utter a peep about the 47 documented special advisers in the Bush administration."

Bush's special advisers included one for Katrina and one for food safety.

Counting official advisers is an inexact science because "czar" is never part of the formal job title.

By staff writers Lynn Bonner, Rob Christensen and Benjamin Niolet