City: Durham, NC
Category: Education
Address: 2301 Erwin Rd.
2. North Carolina Central University
City: Durham, NC
Category: Education
Telephone: (919) 560-6100
Address: 302 E. Lawson St.
Description: Established in 1910 as the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua for African-American students, N.C. Central is today part of the University of North Carolina’s 16-school system. It enrolls about 9,000 students. The school offers bachelor’s degrees in more than 100 fields and graduate degrees in 40 disciplines, including law, business, education, and library and information sciences. Its biotechnology research department works in concert with companies in the Research Triangle Park. N.C. Central is a NCAA division I school and a member of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. Among its most successful extracurricular organizations is its marching band, the NCCU Marching Sound Machine, which is scheduled to march in the 2011 Rose Bowl Parade.
3. Durham Technical Community College
City: Durham, NC
Category: Education
Telephone: (919) 536-7200
Address: 1637 Lawson St.
Description: Durham Tech enrolls about 25,000 students annually. The bulk of the school’s students are in continuing education classes. Other coursework includes health technology, nursing assistant programs, business technology, and industrial and information technology. Durham Tech awards associate degrees in nursing, medical assisting, basic law enforcement, opticianry, and several other health-related fields. The school has two campuses outside its main site in central Durham, one in northern Durham and one in Orange County.
City: Durham, NC
Category: Education
Address: 4809 Friends School Rd.
5. Duke School
City: Durham, NC
Category: Education
Telephone: (919) 493-1827
Address: 3716 Old Erwin Rd.
Description: Set on a 40-acre campus with access to wetlands, the school was founded in 1947 as a lab for Duke University students studying education and psychology. It has been independent of the university since 1984 and now caters to children from preschool through eighth grade. Students here enjoy a teacher-student ratio of 1 to 12, and the curriculum is integrated so that technology, art, and music become part of everyday studies rather than a separate course. Students learn through sets of longer-term projects. For example, they might track a hurricane’s path or program a wheelchair made of LEGOs.
6. Durham Academy
City: Durham, NC
Category: Education
Telephone: (919) 493-5787
Address: 3601 Ridge Rd.
Description: With three schools offering classes from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade, Durham Academy offers a unique selection of courses for its roughly 1,100 students. Middle-schoolers can take Latin. High-schoolers can select bioethics, film, and advanced placement statistics. Nearly three-quarters of the faculty have earned advanced degrees and recent senior courses average SAT scores of 1,320. Spread over three campuses and 75 acres, Durham Academy provides more than 400 computers, 15 science labs, three performing arts centers and nine athletic fields. And through an extended program, students can choose activities such as chess, violin, and fencing.
7. The Hill Center
City: Durham, NC
Category: Education
Telephone: (919) 489-7464
Address: 3200 Pickett Rd.
Description: The Hill Center offers a half-day program to children with learning disabilities or attention deficit disorders who are enrolled part-time in another public or private school. More than 90 percent of its high-school students go on to college.
8. Immaculata Catholic School
City: Durham, NC
Category: Education
Telephone: (919) 682-5847
Address: 721 Burch Ave.
Description: With about 400 students, Immaculata offers a Catholic school education to children from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Students taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills consistently rank in the top third, often the top quarter, of all students who participate. Students are grouped in classes of 18 to 24, and all wear simple uniforms. Set in downtown Durham, Immaculata turned 100 years old in 2009.
9. The Lerner Jewish Community Day School
City: Durham, NC
Category: Education
Telephone: (919) 286-5517
Address: 1935 W. Cornwallis Rd.
Description: About 150 students attend this Jewish school, two-thirds of them in kindergarten through fifth grade and the rest three- and four-year-olds. Curriculum covers traditional coursework, art, music, physical education, Judaic studies, and Hebrew language. After school, students can take piano, guitar, drama, sports, and Hebrew games. Congregational affiliation is mixed and about 15 percent of the students follow strictly kosher diets. Here, the students work on an eight-acre wooded campus and scores average in the 93rd percentile on standardized tests.
10. Triangle Day School
City: Durham, NC
Category: Education
Telephone: (919) 383-8800
Address: 4911 Neal Rd.
Description: At Triangle Day School, students enjoy Internet access in every classroom. They take music, drama, and art history starting in kindergarten, and can begin foreign language classes at that age. With 150 students from kindergarten up to the eighth grade, it’s an intimate atmosphere. Independent and non-sectarian, more than half the school’s teachers have advanced degrees. Founded in 1991, the students can walk over a 15-acre site in Durham near a Civil War landmark. Many Triangle Day students go on to the region’s best high schools.
11. Trinity School Of Durham And Chapel Hill
City: Durham, NC
Category: Education
Telephone: (919) 402-8262
Address: 4011 Pickett Rd.
Description: An independent Christian school, Trinity has 60 different congregations represented in its student body. Set on the Orange County line on a 22-acre campus, the school was formed in 1995 by a group of Durham-area churches seeking to combine academic excellence with Christian commitment. By 2000, the school had a permanent building with 160 students, a total that has since risen beyond 400 from kindergarten to 12th grade.