Schoolwise, a partnership between Sugar Creek Charter in north Charlotte and UNC Charlotte’s Urban Education Collaborative, is teaming up a public charter school in Charlotte where low-income students excel at science and math with a university that specializes in urban education.

Chance Lewis is in charge of UNCC’s Urban Education Collaborative, a group of education professors partnering with local schools to study and improve public education. He’s spearheading an effort to design a math/science curriculum that offers high-level lessons in terms low-income children can understand.

Sugar Creek will test these lessons through its after-school program. They will be specifically designed around N.C. standards, but Lewis hopes they’ll eventually reshape teaching across the nation. UNCC researchers will study Sugar Creek to find out what lessons are benefiting  students and helping them achieve at higher levels.

Frank Martin, chairman of the Sugar Creek board, hopes such partnerships will grow across North Carolina and bring traditional public and nontraditional schools together.  With charters and CMS working alongside each other, “we can give Charlotte’s children the best public education of any city in the country.”