If you are moving to the Greater Raleigh area and want to know about specific WCPSS programming, read on:

K-12: The Formative Years

Committed to excellence, The Board of Education has adopted an ambitious goal. They aim to have 95 percent of WCPSS students in grades three through 12, at or above grade level by the end of this year! Such ambitious goals are indicative of a forward thinking and committed board, who are dedicated to providing the best education and ensuring that positive growth continues.

Parents in this area have a wide variety of educational options. There are many traditional public schools and also numerous private and special-needs schools. WCPSS offers over 20 programs in the district with 51 magnet schools. The award winning magnet school program provides creative approaches for teachers to reach students and to meet different student’s individual learning styles and needs. Magnet schools in the area, have been especially recognized with awards such as the United States Magnet School of Excellence of award and the Magnet School of Distinction award.

Recently the district received a portion of a 2.3 million dollar grant to open a health and life science themed high school aimed at developing students for both higher education and jobs in biotechnology and health care. Students at these schools will have the opportunity to participate in internship programs and will have access to community college and university level courses. There’s other grant funding in place which comes from the New Schools Project, an 11 million dollar grant that will create more than 100 new and redesigned high schools across the state.

Post- Secondary: Superior Education at Your Doorstep!

North Carolina State University, as one of the nation’s top research universities, is a great example of one the best post secondary options in Raleigh. Home to BTEC, The Golden LEAF Biomanfacturing Training and Education Center, this University is committed to providing a highly trained, industry-focused workforce. Dedicated to pursue “innovation in action”, NCSU partner’s with business’s, industry and government with a focus to collectively create innovative products and research.

The region’s community colleges also offer solid programs for those wishing to pursue technical, or specialized training in particular sectors of the workforce.

North Carolina community college is focused on biotechnology training to provide a highly trained workforce for the estimated 125,000 residents of NC who will be employed in this sector by 2025.

Wake Technical Community College is a leader in biological and chemical technology programs. They also offer North Carolina’s only community college lab facility for industrial pharmaceutical technology. As a state leader providing over 20% of all industry training offered by community colleges in the state, Wake Tech serves as a catalyst for economic growth and development. This exceptional community college assists thousands of businesses with its superior Small Business Center and New and Expanding Industry Program.

It is easy to see why Raleigh, North Carolina boasts one of America’s most educated workforces. If education is important to you and your family, consider Raleigh, North Carolina as a smart option for a solid future.

Primarily due to the availability of online programs, the range of obtainable disciplines has expanded so that most bachelor programs have a corresponding masters certification. With today’s online education opportunities, you can earn online Masters degrees in interesting areas such as computer science, education, or health care management.

Advantages of Masters Degrees

The advantages of online Masters degrees are abundant. There is no commuting, class times are flexible, materials are archived online, and over-enrollment is rarely an issue. Given these unique benefits, it’s worth considering your various masters degree options.

Different Kinds of Master’s Degrees

Master of Liberal Arts (M.A.), Master of Science (M.S.), Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.), and Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) are the four most popular types of certification. You can also earn a Master in Library Science (M.L.S.), Social Work (M.S.W.), Public Health (M.P.H.), and Education (M.Ed.).

Job Opportunities with a Masters Degree

Because a bachelors degree has now become the standard for most industries, individuals who have earned online Masters degrees have a decisive advantage in the job market. Earning your masters degree demonstrates to employers an elevated level of dedication and competency in a given field because of the additional credentials.

According to the US Census Bureau, those with a master’s degree can expect to make more than twice as much as those with only a high school diploma and almost 20% more than those with only a bachelors degree. Considering this income boost, the time and money invested in a masters education is clearly worth it.

Nancy Lambert is an executive for Accredited-Online-Colleges.com Accredited-Online-Colleges.com provides information on hundreds of degrees offered online through accredited colleges and universities. From online certificates to Associates, Bachelors, Masters and PhD degrees, Accredited-Online-Colleges.com helps students and adults discover the advantages of earning their master’s degrees online.

Better education, affordable healthcare and energy independence all sound great but are they worth the debt that we are piling up now? What good will it do anyone if we accumulate more debt in the process of achieving these objectives than these programs are worth? I would like to see this administration set priorities with a clear explanation of how the priorities were established and how they intend to achieve them. If our economic downfall was a direct result from toxic loans where individuals accumulated more mortgage debt than they could repay, then how does this administration intend to turn the economy around and reach its objectives by this same principle, that is, accumulate more debt that you can repay?

Improving Education

Our current public education system is a government ran education system where the government dictates which public school, according to school district, a student has to attend. If our current school system is in disarray then it is a direct result of government intervention. How do we expect to see an improvement in our education system by allowing the government to have greater control over our education system? In order to mandate so called improvements the government is going to want greater control.

I have often heard that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. If a government ran education system resulted in a poor quality of education for our children then how do we expect more government involvement to improve the system? I for one would like to see the government completely removed from running our education system and let parents make decisions regarding their children’s education. If parents make the decision of which school their children will attend then schools will have to raise their education standards to parent’s standards and not the governments.

If we take the tax dollars that we are currently spending on education and give it to parents then parents are going to place their children where they feel their children will get the best education. The schools that are providing a better education will attract more parents and these schools will have more funds to pay teachers. Schools can then pay teachers according to performance levels and quality of the entire education system will improve. Parents have this freedom with child care and college and yet in between these years our government somehow knows what is best for our children.

Affordable Healthcare

As I was preparing this article I heard a report on the radio about how the health care industry was going to have layoffs due to losses from investments. What caught my attention was the statement that layoffs were due to losses from investments. I thought the healthcare industry was in business to provide healthcare and not manage investment portfolios. Why is it then that layoffs are driven by investment losses and not from losses resulting from rising unemployment?

It has been widely reported that skyrocketing healthcare costs are a direct result of paying for the uninsured and yet staffing requirements are driven from investment values. Which brings me to another point that caught my attention, while the rest of the country has been struggling with economic turmoil the healthcare industry apparently has an investment portfolio that is strong enough that it takes until the spring of 2009 before its value effects significant layoffs.

The healthcare industry has claimed that high costs are related to the number of uninsured as if everyone without healthcare insurance is a burden to the healthcare industry. If I own a store I may have to increase my prices to cover the losses from theft. It would not be ethical of me to increase my prices based on the number of people who enter my store that don’t have enough money to pay and not base it on the actual losses from stealing.

What is the bottom line for conducting business in the healthcare industry. The formula is a simple one. Revenues minus costs equals profits or losses. If you make enough money to manage an investment portfolio then you are making a profit. If our government wants to get involved with controlling health care costs then why can’t it investigate the actual cost structure for the health care industry and quit feeding us information about the number of people that are uninsured. When the government finds occurrences of overcharging then heavy fines will get everyone’s attention.

Energy Independence

Our country depends heavily on foreign oil and if our nation were energy independent then the money that we are paying to have oil shipped into our country could remain in our economy. This disparity of paying foreign nations to provide the majority of our oil has been coined the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world and yet our nation still does not have a plan in place to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Our politicians are grid locked in a debate as to whether drilling for our own oil is the answer. We are told that if we started drilling now that it would take several years before any of the natural resources would be available for public consumption. Some politicians tell us that we need renewable energy to replace fossil fuels, but it will also take years to reach this objective. In the meantime our nation still needs energy to conduct day to day activities.

Drilling now may not be the comprehensive answer to solving our energy independence problem just as building the blue ridge parkway did not solve future mass transit problems. The construction of the blue ridge parkway did provide immediate jobs though and our nation was in desperate need of jobs during the great depression. Drilling now will provide immediate construction jobs to erect platform rigs. These platform rigs will need construction materials which will provide manufacturing jobs and these materials will need to be delivered to the construction sites which will provide transportation jobs.

We may not be able to drill our way to energy independence but we can drill our way to immediate job creation and shouldn’t job creation be a priority in a struggling economy. Our automobiles of the future may indeed be powered by renewable energy and our current automobiles will subsequently become antiques. These antiques will however be part of our heritage and if we want to preserve our heritage then we will want a way to fuel these antiques. Who knows? The drilling that we start today may be the energy requirements that we need to preserve our heritage of tomorrow without dependence to foreign oil.