Wake County Board of Education Update
2010
Minority Gaps in Education
On C-SPAN August 24, Kati Haycock, president of Education Trust, spoke out against the BOE's decision to drop the diversity policy.
Race to the Top' funds awarded
North Carolina was among the states selected to receive up to $400 million in federal funds for new innovations in public education (aka 'Race to the Top'). After losing out in the first round, credit is due to the Department of Public Instruction, Supt. June Atkinson and the North Carolina BOE for "sharpening their pencils" in the resubmitted proposal.
WCPSS in WSJ
Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, wrote this blog post for the WSJ about the diversity struggle in WCPSS -- and beyond.
North Carolina resetting school standards
North Carolina one of the first states to adopt national standards for math and English for public school children, setting milestones for learning that are meant to push U.S. students to be more competitive. In doing so, North Carolina will join what the nation's governors and state school chiefs call an important endeavor to ensure equity and quality."
Fear of 'resegregation'
This Associated Press story appeared in the Daily Reflector, Greenville's daily newspaper. It chronicles the history of Wake County's journey of diverse schools to present day. The story notes that the move to desegregate schools 50 years ago was peaceful, compared to the recent turmoil stirred up for the election of the new BOE majority.
Wake board takes the highest bid
This is a follow-up story in today's N&O about the decision to hire a search firm to find the WCPSS new superintendent. "Indications last week were that the board majority wants a top-level leader, perhaps someone from industry or another field, but also wants to keep a relatively tight rein on the person."
WCPSS suspension, drop-out rates
This data, along with info about the drop-out rates, was shared with the student achievement committee earlier this month. Read more on the WakeEd blog.
The latest issue of this publication is very topical to the issues and debates currently facing WCPSS. In particular, the story “ Why I changed my mind” illustrates the flaws in the BOE majority's quest for parental choice in running the school system. It was written by Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, and assistant secretary of educator for research in the George H.W. Bush administration.
He explains that the percentage of base students attending magnets will increase. There are also plans to remove satellite nodes and spot nodes from certain schools' assignments. Through this link, http://wwwgis2.wcpss.net/cgi-bin/prod/mainscript/MainScript.pl?MainOption=School
you can see current maps of specific schools' assignment bases. WRAL also covered this story.
Assignment policy sets stage for long debate
Wake Education Partnership's latest edition of In Context reviews how politics will trump compromise
going forward after Tuesday's historic vote on Policy 6200. As noted in this blog post from
The Progressive Pulse, the changes set in motion by the BOE majority's vote will cause "programmatic
changes, busing changes, not to mention costs that the board majority has yet to consider."
Blast from the past
Bob Geary unearthed this video from last year's BOE campaign. In it, 13th District
Congress hopeful, Bill Randall (R) gives a speech (with Debra Goldman nodding in agreement) to
A special BOE meeting was on April 23, at 4PM. John Tedesco
presented his vision for a community zone assignment plan. Wake Education Partnership offers a
You can watch the BOE meeting on WRAL.
Analysis from Wake Education Partnership
The Wake Education Partnership, a nonprofit examining education issues in Wake County, has
written an indepth analysis "Creating Stability and Balance in Wake County's Schools," which is
currently online.Previous issues of their series "Understand Your Schools" include analysis of magnet
schools, neighborhood schools and mandatory year-round schedules. In their earlier report on
neighborhood schools, WEP showed the patterns that may occur if each student is assigned to his or
her closest school.
Atila Abdulkadiroglu, the apparent co-author of Tedesco's powerpoint presentation illustrating his
vision for community assignment zones, has written a blog post, expanding on the April 23 presentation.
Boston, NYC vs. Wake County
In his presentation on Friday, Tedesco compared his community assignment zone plan to similar
algorithims used in Boston and NYC. Here's a cost comparison, via a Great Schools in Wake colleage:
The cost of educating a student in BPS zoned schools is $13,849 per year. (Approx. $16,000 in NYC
and ~$7800 in WCPSS.)
76% of the students in BPS are minorities. The graduation rate is 60%. (Note the white middle class
has largely left Boston for the suburbs and the school population is declining.) In addition, this article
outlines how NY’s experiment with closing failing schools and reopening them as smaller schools has
created many failures including continuing failures of most high needs schools.
The "collateral damage" was recently illustrated in a recent report from the New School which points
out:"As the city closed large troubled high schools and opened small schools in their place, thousands
of students, most of whom had low levels of academic achievement were diverted to the remaining large schools in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn. Enrollment increased at three-quarters of those schools,
while attendance and graduation rates declined at more than 40 percent of the remaining large schools
in those three boroughs."
The number of teachers requesting to transfer out of their current school has risen since last year.
23 teachers each at Leesville Road Elementary and Middle Schools have asked to move to other schools.
Details, including links to the school lists, are on the WakeEd blog
Donna Hargens was officially named interim superintendent while the search
for Del Burns' replacement continues.
Wake's budget situation has gone from bad to worse, according to this story from WRAL.
This youtube video
was made during the March 23 BOE meeting and offers a student's perspective
on the proceedings.
Students shuffled closer to home
Charlotte Observer:
New CMS zones draw kudos and criticism [foreshadowing for Wake County]
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