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Nov. 16-30, 2010, News Archive
11/30/10 Civil rights and the news from Raleigh
"Wake County Schools, which just became a majority-minority school system, is going through turmoil as a new school board majority prepares to shift to a neighborhood-based assignment system, scrapping the longstanding system that used family income to promote school diversity. CMS crossed the less-than-half-white threshold many years ago (currently about one-third of students are white), and beat Raleigh to the punch on the shift to neighborhood schools."
11/30/10 Thousands of SE Raleigh students might be reassigned
"But other committee members who supported the now-discarded diversity policy warned that the moves of the Southeast Raleigh students would create high-poverty schools. They also warned it would eliminate large numbers of seats in Southeast Raleigh magnet schools for people to apply to next year."
11/30/10 Wake schools' split over student assignment affects 2011-12 planning
"Tuesday, however, some community members on the assignment panel suggested dozens and dozens of areas - called nodes - whose hundreds and hundreds of students they said should be moved to other schools next year to embrace the district's new policy that emphasizes proximity to schools."
11/30/10 Superintendent candidates may be interviewing
"But the board will meet at 8 a.m. at the Hilton NorthRaleigh on 3415 Wake Forest Road, which would allow them to meet candidates in a more private setting."
11/30/10 Committee to discuss 2011-12 assignment plan
"School board member John Tedesco, chairman of the committee, said they'll discuss with staff the rubric being used to evaluate moves. He said they'll also hear from staff about the feedback from the four community workshops."
11/29/10 Debra Goldman as the swing vote in the year ahead
"Board member Kevin Hill said he can't predict how Goldman will vote. He also said he doesn't feel that there's a new majority on the board."
11/28/10 School turbulence unlikely to subside
"Democratic board member Keith Sutton, who has fought to retain the system's former diversity-based student assignment system, said, "When people are at a point where they refuse to work together no matter what, no matter how important it is, because relations are that strained, it certainly doesn't help the children or families of Wake County."
11/28/10 Short school rations
"For Margiotta to suggest that Wake County Schools ought to be run more efficiently is like telling a malnourished child she needs to lose weight."
11/28/10 Not about nodes
"Charlotte is closing schools to save money. Other districts are increasing class size, letting art, music and PE teachers go, laying off librarians and counselors and cutting athletics. But our board? They are concentrating on who is going to schools where, indifferent to whether there will be a teacher in the classroom once they get there."
11/28/10 Budget cuts bloat CMS class sizes
"This year, she'll juggle six, including an Advanced Placement biology class of 38. She's had to cobble together more lab station space using her desk and a computer cart. "It's very challenging," she said. With the extra students, "it actually adds up to teaching another class. You're grading that many more papers at home."
11/26/10 Inside Job or 'Superman': Which One Better Explains the School Crisis?
"But while the movie includes statements such as 'we know what's wrong' and 'we know how to fix it', viewers of the movie are hard-pressed to identify those causes and solutions -- other than to boo and hiss at teachers' unions and to cheer at the heroic charter school educators."
11/26/10 Kevin Hill and Keith Sutton also planning to run for election next year
"At least three of the five Wake County school board members whose seats are on the ballot in October plan to run for office."
11/25/10 Board opts for favoritism
"CMS presented a complex and not entirely coherent rationale for the proposed closures."
11/25/10 Fairfax County school redistricting plans draw protests from parents
"Some schools continue to be overcrowded and others are well under capacity. Neither is a good environment for learning," said Denise James, director of facilities planning services for Fairfax public schools."
11/24/10 Whites outnumbered in Wake schools
"New figures released Tuesday by Wake show that children from minority groups account for a majority of the 143,289 students in the state's largest school system. It's a trend that has been years in the making, fueled in part by the fast growth in Hispanic enrollment."
11/24/10 Weighing whether the student assignment committee should meet Tuesday
"John Tedesco, the chairman of the committee, said he is still weighing whether to hold the meeting on Tuesday. But he indicated he's leaning toward meeting. The committee hasn't met since Oct. 12."
11/23/10 PTA official: We can't pay for teachers
"At least one Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board member may want to let PTAs raise money for teacher salaries, but national and state PTA rules forbid that, the head of the Mecklenburg PTA Council says."
11/23/10 Disputing that diversity policy has led to white flight
"The affluent are not fleeing to private schools due to the diversity policy, assignment uncertainty, calendar changes, or anything else," Riemann writes. "No one is fleeing, because Wake County's opt-out rate is essentially unchanged and has not doubled in ten years from 9% to 18%."
11/23/10 Student transfers from failing schools via No Child law swamp successful ones
"In some struggling school districts around the country, students transferring from failing schools are overwhelming the few successful schools in their areas, an unintended byproduct of the No Child Left Behind law."
11/23/10 Minorities now the majority in Wake schools
"For the first time, minority students now account for a majority of the students in the Wake County school system."
11/23/10 Response from John Tedesco (I think)
"Well, I have never intended to allow comments on the blog, but I did not restrict them properly. For this reason, I was fortunate to receive a response from Mr. Tedesco to my last post. (I assume it is really him. I guess we will see.) The response, presented in full at the permalink, is reprinted below with my reply interspersed."
11/23/10 Socioeconomic diversity and "white flight"
"So if assignment plans determine who opts out of our public schools, and your goal is to retain affluent students, which plan would you rather have?"
11/22/10 Wake Education Partnership honors its "Cornerstone Investors"
"In an e-mail message today, the WEP says they're renaming this group from "Major Donors" to "Cornerstone Investors" to have a more fitting title to honor this "distinguished group of supporters."
11/22/10 Removing people early from the board advisory councils
"Board members Debra Goldman and Deborah Prickett have removed some BAC members before the expiration of their terms in order to replace them with new people. In May, the board changed the policy that had previously meant that BAC members served until the end of their terms, which could run up to three years."
11/22/10 Public school cuts would be disastrous
"They use the measured tones you would expect from public officials, but make no mistake, state education officials made clear today that they are convinced disaster awaits if the Governor and/or the new House and Senate leaders go through with the kind of spending cuts they're discussing."
11/22/10 Poll shows support for charter schools cap, but advocates of the limit give ground
"A new poll released Monday shows most North Carolinians support the current 100-school cap on charter schools, but one of the limit's biggest backers - the N.C. School Boards Association - now says it could accept an increase."
11/22/10 Budget cuts threaten Wake schools again
"The state's largest public school system could see hundreds of layoffs in the classroom under potential state budget cuts, according to data released Monday."
11/22/10 State cuts could cost Wake more than 400 classroom teachers
"The state Department of Public Instruction was asked by Gov. Bev Perdue to draw up how it would cut funding by 5 and 10 percent to help close a $3.5 billion revenue shortfall next year. A 5 percent cut to Wake, or $51.6 million, would cost the state's largest school system 429 classroom teachers and 73 instructional support positions."
11/22/10 State Didn't Vet Advisers on Chancellor Pick for Conflicts
?"As new revelations surfaced about extensive ties between Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and members of the panel evaluating his choice for school's chancellor, state officials acknowledged on Monday that they did not screen the panel members for conflicts of interest or connections to the Bloomberg administration before appointing them."
11/20/10 Teaching for America
"President Obama got this one exactly right when he said that whoever "out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow." The bad news is that for years now we've been getting out-educated."
11/21/10 When charters erode
"In our experience, the "open" selection process is open only to students whose parents are available to put in compulsory volunteer time and can get their children to school with no busing and who do not need free or reduced-price lunch. With such a population, it is no wonder that these schools show higher test scores."
11/21/10 School choice gains ground
"If this is done poorly, it can take a (public school) situation that is already unacceptable in some parts of the state and make it even worse," Rex said. "These tax credits will tend to favor people who can already afford to put their children into private schools. It will make us more separate, more unequal and less competitive."
11/20/10 Socioeconomic Diversity and "White Flight"
"Has Wake County's socioeconomic diversity policy driven affluent students away?"
11/20/10 High, low, in between
"The research shows that when students, especially elementary school students, are homogeneously grouped by ability, guess which group gets the least-prepared teachers, the worst instruction and has the poorest outcomes? You guessed it - the low-performing students."
11/20/10 Misfortune v. injustice
"Closing the achievement gap isn't going to happen by wishful thinking or by approaching student assignment with a laissez-faire attitude that allows all the low performers to congregate together in high-poverty schools. Closing the achievement gap requires balanced, well-funded schools."
11/20/10 State's education department details big school cuts
"North Carolina could lose more than 5,300 teachers and all public school classes would be larger under a proposal for education cuts prepared for Gov. Bev Perdue's budget office."
11/20/10 Charlotte's poor students fare better
"Even as the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools system faces complaints of racism over school closing plans, a recent state report confirms that the district's poor and minority students are doing better academically than most around the state."
11/20/10 Johnston school board defends its money management
"Johnston County school leaders on Friday rebutted criticism of their spending and said the schools could not withstand further budget cuts without layoffs."
11/19/10 Top 10 ways to improve student achievement and create learners
"Over the course of my educational experience I've collected a list of criteria that I believe create an atmosphere ripe for improving student achievement."
11/19/10 Firing teachers is a bad idea
"In many ways, this is nothing new. Far right groups like the Locke Foundation have been attempting to peddle the nonsensical idea that class size is irrelevant for years."
11/19/10 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools bracing for more cutbacks
"The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board begins a brutal budget-cutting year today, when officials lay out the cost of programs that could come under scrutiny."
11/18/10 Myron Orfield: Eden Prairie plan healthy, thoughtful
"The situations in Wake County and Eden Prairie are hardly comparable. The Wake County school district has almost 15 times as many students as Eden Prairie's and is almost 25 times bigger in land area. A typical bus ride for a child in Wake County is much longer than even the longest rides for kids in Eden Prairie, either now or with the new plan."
11/18/10 Complaints: Charlotte-Mecklenburg's schools violated civil rights
"The U.S. Education Department is reviewing five civil-rights complaints alleging that Charlotte-Mecklenburg's school closings and other assignment changes discriminate against black and Hispanic students."
11/18/10 Wake school board under probe
"If the school system is declared in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Wake could lose about $80 million a year in federal funding."
11/18/10 School squeeze
"That planning surely must include a careful look at the costs of different assignment methods. The board faction led by Hill's successor as chairman, Ron Margiotta, had been in such a rush to abandon the diversity policy that cost implications were being kicked down the road. And this was all with the blessing of local Republicans, those self-identified tribunes of fiscal conservatism. No, it made no sense."
11/18/10 Learning about the federal civil rights investigation
"I have much more confidence in Ann Majestic and Tharrington Smith than I do in the random complaint of some naysayers," Tedesco said."
11/18/10 The facts should get in the way
"Cutting any deeper means the state will struggle to manage and monitor the billions that are spent in the classroom and on the support personnel that make it possible for teachers to do their jobs. Republicans preach accountability and strict financial oversight. That is tough to do if there is no one to do the overseeing."
11/18/10 From inadequate to terrible
"Think of it this way: If North Carolina's K-12 system were a building, it would be something like a worn out Quonset hut or, maybe a ramshackle mobile home. It exists; it serves its purpose - often better than we probably have a right to expect. But to think it is somehow positioned to lead the state into a bright, new 21st Century future with present (or even diminished) resources is preposterous."
11/18/10 The right's budget "solution": Fund education with charity
"Got that? In addition to firing scads of teachers and other personnel that help them do their jobs, the right-wing plan - at least for community colleges and universities - is to increase "private fundraising."
11/17/10 Feds to investigate claims of bias in Wake schools
"The U.S. Department of Education will look into complaints of racial bias against the Wake County Public School System filed by the state NAACP."
11/17/10 Federal government to probe claims of racism against Wake schools
"Federal officials receive thousands of complaints each year but investigate few of them. If the school system is declared in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Wake could lose more than $80 million a year in federal funding."
11/17/10 Report: NC education system one of America's worst-funded
"Besides being one of the most underfunded systems in the country, North Carolina's school funding formula is one of the most complex and least effective at aiding needy students, says a new study from the NC Justice Center's Education & Law Project."
11/16/10 Wake school board displays deep split on student assignment process
"You've participated in the kind of meetings I'm talking about, where we devote a whole day to one topic," Hill told Margiotta. He said any assignment plan that comes out of a process that does not have consensus will not work. Hill called for all board members to handle reassignment because "that's one of those issues that transcends the committee level."
11/16/10 Opposition Growing to Bloomberg Pick for Schools
"But a spectacle is exactly what Mr. Bloomberg has unleashed, and one week after announcing his choice of Cathleen P. Black, a publishing executive, to succeed Joel I. Klein at the helm of the country's largest school system, the mayor's aides are trying to fend off mounting skepticism about her selection."
11/16/10 Plan passes to slow school-assignment plan
"School board member Kevin Hill got a thumbs up from colleagues minutes ago for his plan to put in place a deliberative process for revamping Wake County's student assignment plan."
11/16/10 Wake schools could face layoffs, administrators warn
"Wake County school administrators painted their grimmest budget picture yet for next school year as they warned today that layoffs are inevitable and that deep classroom cuts will have to be considered."
11/16/10 Wake schools considering student assignment changes
"Items mentioned today include relieving overcrowding at Leesville Road Middle School in North Raleigh and Farmington Woods Elementary School in Cary by reassigning some students who come from Southeast Raleigh."
11/16/10 Classrooms that light the way for schools
"Social and economic standing are accidental, but not incidental, factors that affect current, but not necessarily future, academic performance."
