A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT to amend the Criteria used by the Committee on Dropout Prevention to award the dropout prevention grants, to direct the committee on dropout prevention to use evaluations from prior grant cycles to identify evidence‑based programmatic elements that are effective and replicable, and to allocate funds to study high schools that have significantly reduced their dropout rate to identify programs that merit REPLICATION and Assess the progress of programs that are no longer receiving dropout prevention grants, as recommended by the Joint legislative commission on dropout prevention and high school graduation.
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
SECTION 1.  Section 7.13(b)(3) of S.L. 2009‑451 reads as rewritten:
"(3)	Grants shall be distributed geographically throughout the State and throughout the eight educational districts as defined in G.S. 115C‑65. No more than three grants shall be awarded in any one county under this section in a single fiscal year. When grant applications are of equal quality and merit, grants shall be given to applications from counties with no current grant recipients."
SECTION 2.  Section 7.13(b)(10) of S.L. 2009‑451 reads as rewritten:
"(10)	Priority for grants shall be given to programs that would serve students in local schools that have either: (i) a four‑year cohort graduation rate of less than sixty percent (60%) in the most recent school year and one of two prior school years, or (ii) a performance composite under fifty percent (50%). The Committee shall establish a grant rating cutoff score at such a level as to allow for consideration of all viable grants in this priority category. The Committee may require grantees to provide supplemental information in response to any prior reviewer comments."
SECTION 3.  Section 7.13(b)(11) of S.L. 2009‑451 reads as rewritten:
"(11)	Priority for grants shall be given to proposals demonstrating the potential for success and that contain multiple evidence‑based programmatic elements that have been shown to be effective and replicable. The Committee on Dropout Prevention shall use the evaluations from prior grant cycles to identify the evidence‑based programmatic elements."
SECTION 4.  Section 7.13(f) of S.L. 2009‑451 is amended by adding a new subdivision to read:
"(5)	Up to one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) for the 2010‑2011 fiscal year shall be used by the Committee on Dropout Prevention to conduct a systematic study of high schools that have reduced their dropout rate significantly over the past three years to identify programs that merit replication. This study shall be designed and conducted under the direction of the Dropout Prevention Committee and shall include assessment of successful programs in counties that have not received dropout prevention grants and programs that received grants in previous years but are no longer receiving dropout prevention grants. Such assessments shall be used for comparison purposes with funded grants."
SECTION 5.  This act becomes effective July 1, 2010.