School Officials To Discuss Ways To Keep Students

School officials from across the Triangle area are meeting in Raleigh Monday to discuss key education issues.

Around 4,500 teachers and administrators are meeting at the RBC Center to discuss High Five: Regional Partnership for High School Excellence -- a five-year program focusing on improving high school performance and supported by Triangle businesses.

Getting more students to graduate is at the top of the agenda. Officials estimate as many as 37 percent of adult-age North Carolinians do not have a high school degree. Last year, another 20,000 dropped out.

"That's a lot of lost students, a lot of lost potential, a lot of burden to the state," said interim state superintendent Tricia Willoughby.

Teachers hope to learn how to keep students through to the very end.

"We've got to make sure we're engaging students in curriculum that makes sense to them and is delivered in a way that's relevant to the real world," Willoughby said.

This week, many students from Wake, Durham, Cumberland and Johnston counties will be heading back to school.