A year after hauling in the top state and national honors for public school superintendents, Mark Edwards of the Mooresville Graded School District has another.
On Tuesday, Edwards was named the recipient of the 2014 Public School Forum of North Carolina Jay Robinson Education Leadership Award.
The award was established by the Public School Forum Board of Directors in 2000 to recognize “exemplary leaders who have made outstanding contributions to public education.” The forum board has the leeway of giving the award to “anyone who has displayed innovative, creative, effective leadership for public education in North Carolina.”
Edwards, who has led the MGSD since 2007, will accept the award on June 9 during a Celebration of Leadership reception and luncheon in Raleigh. Last year, he was named the N.C. and national superintendent of the year, and also was the 2013 Common Sense Media Educator of the Year.
“Mark Edwards certainly exemplifies all the characteristics we look for in Jay Robinson Education Leadership Award recipients — dedication, leadership and courage,” said Gene Arnold, chairman of the Public School Forum of North Carolina Board.
“The results he has already achieved in Mooresville are nothing short of remarkable, demonstrating record increases in test scores, graduation rates and college readiness – across all racial and socio-economic lines – by empowering teachers and principals, setting high expectations for all students and fully incorporating digital learning into the classroom.”
The award is named in honor of the late Dr. Jay Robinson, one of North Carolina’s most distinguished education leaders. He was a superintendent of schools in Cabarrus County and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school systems, and later chaired the State Board of Education and was the first president of the Public School Forum. He died in 2000.
One of Mark Edwards’s endorsers for the award was Tom Campbell, executive producer and Moderator of NC SPIN, North Carolina’s only statewide radio and television talk show, whose column runs regularly in the Tribune.
“Mark Edwards had the vision, the courage and the commitment to want better for the education of children under his care,” Campbell said. “Mark was willing to attempt great things by being different and was able to enlist the teachers in his system in following him.
“He is convicted every child can learn and that his task in life is to help them achieve as much education as they desire.”
