ABSTRACT
Business-as-usual was not on the minds of North Carolina’s CharlotteMecklenburg School Board when they hired Eric Smith to assume leadership of the nation’s 26th largest school system in 1996. Th e district needed a change agent, someone with the vision and political skills to address a variety of pressing issues. No issue was more urgent, though, than the substantial achievement gap between African American and white students. Only four of every ten African American students were reading at or above grade level. Math performance refl ected a similar statistic.
