The myFutureNC Commission has been created because:

• North Carolina must increase the number of individuals who have earned a postsecondary credential with labor market value to meet the needs of a growing and more competitive economy.
• North Carolina’s population is growing in both its size and its diversity, which presents opportunities and challenges for our entire educational system, preschool through postsecondary.
• North Carolina is among a minority of states without clear educational attainment goals and a broad-based, statewide strategy designed to achieve those goals.

The primary responsibility of the myFutureNC Commission is to develop shared goals for educational attainment in North Carolina.

The myFutureNC Commission consists of top thought leaders from the education, business, philanthropy, faith-based, and nonprofit communities to break down silos and coordinate key stakeholders in order to make the best use of all educational resources in the state.

The myFutureNC Commission will create a comprehensive statewide education plan that will move our state to an outcomes based educational system and improve the current education policy environment by:

• Developing policy recommendations with broad support from stakeholders across the state to address the Commission’s goals.
• Identifying key indicators and benchmarks to measure progress
• Fostering greater public awareness and engagement around the needs of the state and its students, from P-12 through postsecondary, which includes community college to four-year universities, and from college into the workforce.

The myFutureNC Commission will hold five in-person meetings and will host eight Listening Sessions across the state to solicit input from different stakeholders about barriers and opportunities within the state’s education system. Additionally, several surveys will be conducted to gather constituent feedback and measure citizens’ opinions, experiences, and attitudes regarding educational opportunity and workforce needs in North Carolina.

Over the course of 15 months, the Commission will produce a series of written publications that include:

• Report: The Commission report will recommend attainment goals for the state and identify the key challenges that stand in the way of meeting them, and will also lay out key policy recommendations to address challenges, remove obstacles, and achieve the attainment goals.
• Policy Briefs: The myFutureNC Commission will also publish a series of ten policy briefs that examine current trends and identify key strategies for improving North Carolina’s educational continuum. Topics will include: preschool through third grade education, educator quality, college readiness, credit transfer, postsecondary student success, and other critical education issues.

The launch took place on October 17, 2017 and the myFutureNC Commission will complete its work and proposed recommendations by the end of 2018 with a final report completed by February 2019.

myFutureNC will engage and work with other committees, organizations and commissions that are working to ensure a quality education system in North Carolina. The unique strength of myFutureNC is its emphasis on the entire education continuum and alignment across sectors and silos. The Commission is also a time-limited initiative that will culminate in a set of broad-based recommendations. Finally, this work will be fully informed by the work of complementary initiatives in North Carolina and will play a key role in helping to establish common goals and align efforts toward those goals.

The Commission will focus primarily on reforms and initiatives that will help  close the seams between the different sectors of the educational continuum, thereby smoothing the path from Pre-K all the way through to a postsecondary credential and adults who need to come back into the educational system for additional credentials and/or degrees. Key questions will include:

• How do we ensure that expectations about school and college readiness are clearly communicated to students, parents, educators, and policymakers in the P-12 public school pipeline that feeds into the postsecondary system?
• How can we leverage state investments to encourage high aspirations and college-going cultures early in a student’s academic life?
• How do we ensure that students can seamlessly transfer throughout the education continuum, from early learning programs to K-12 schools and ultimately into postsecondary education and training, including between and among institutions of higher education in North Carolina?
• How can leaders within the education continuum work together to make a career in teaching and educational leadership more attractive to North Carolina’s best and brightest?
• How can leaders ensure that our educator preparation programs prepare teaching candidates to succeed in today’s classrooms, schools and districts?

​While questions about education funding are certainly relevant to these discussions, rather than focusing on the overall level of education funding in the state, the Commission’s work will focus on key policy levers designed to help more of North Carolina’s students earn a postsecondary credential.

Many stakeholders were engaged in the process of identifying representatives from across the state who will bring a range of perspectives and backgrounds to these key questions. Each section of the education continuum from pre-kindergarten to postsecondary is represented, and participants come from every region and key industry in the state.

The effort is being led by a team of co-chairs — Dale Jenkins, Chief Executive Officer of Medical Mutual Holdings; Andrea Smith, Chief Administrative Officer of Bank of America; and Peter Hans, President of the North Carolina Community College System.

The Commission is comprised of over 40 top thought leaders from the education, business, philanthropy, faith-based, and nonprofit communities from across the state, and ex officio representatives from the North Carolina House of Representatives, Senate, and Governor’s office.

This work is underwritten by grants from The John M. Belk Endowment, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Goodnight Education Foundation.