Gray Stone Day School ranked second in the state out of over 400 open enrollment public high schools on End-of Course tests.  This places the school in the top ½ percent of high schools.  The news was released recently in the North Carolina Public Schools Report Card.  The school also met Average Yearly Progress (AYP). With a cumulative score of 97.9 they were second only to Raleigh Charter High School in Raleigh, NC which has been ranked as one of the top 100 high schools in the United States by US News and World Report. 

The North Carolina New Schools project has developed a program that creates early college high schools that have a selection process to be able to attend.  Some school systems have magnet schools which also have a selection process. Open enrollment schools are traditional public schools and charter schools to which anyone can attend based on their residence and not their academic abilities. There were a few early college high schools and one magnet school with higher scores.   
 
“For us at Gray Stone, this is very exciting.  This puts us ahead of urban schools in the state.  It shows that our students, though living in a rural area, are being provided with opportunities to help them excel in the classroom,” said Helen Nance, Chief Administrative Officer and founder of the school.

Although charter schools are required by law to hold a lottery when they have more students apply than they have space, there is no selection process to decide who comes to the school.  Charter schools are public and therefore free to attend. Gray Stone is made up of students from Stanly, Rowan, Cabarrus, Davidson, Montgomery, Randolph and Mecklenburg counties.  They come from different demographic and economic backgrounds.

“I would like to commend the teachers and students for working hard to reach this accomplishment,” said H. Earl Singletary, Jr., chairman of the board of directors.  “Gray Stone is certainly a success story for our region and I am very proud of the school.”