How Did Charlotte Schools Top Wake?

Courtesy of The Carolinian Newspaper, NC's twice-weekly African-American newspaper, we are re-posting a topical three-part series of articles about the Wake County Public School System, written by Cash Michaels. Part 1, below, was first published in the print-only newspaper November 12, 2009.

© Cash Michaels, The Carolinian

Editor’s note - There is no question that as recently as ten years ago, Wake County Public Schools were considered among the best in the state, if not the nation. But, as recent reports suggest, something has gone wrong, and WCPSS has problems now it long thought were behind it. Problems that have been politically exploited, resulting in an historic change on the Wake school board that many see as detrimental to the future of black students in the system.

In part 1 of a three-part series leading up to the Dec. 1 swearing-in of the new school board, The Carolinian examines exactly what went wrong, and why, with the WCPSS.

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Once upon a time, when Wake African-American community was mounting daily pressure, and the school board was feeling heat, and the system’s superintendent and staff decided that more could, and would be done to energize black and Latino students to perform better in class, the capital county of North Carolina had a public school system that was second to none.

Awards were being won; national recognition from respected organizations like the New York Times and the American Association of School Administrators were rolling in like oranges; the system’s unique practice of maintaining “healthy” low-poverty schools through socioeconomic student diversity was widely heralded as ingenious.

And most importantly, students in the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) were indeed excelling, blowing out school districts like Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) that were comparable in size, but couldn’t hold a candle to Wake’s high level of student achievement.

So when the NC state report card on school system performance on EOG and EOC exams was released last week, why were Charlotte’s black, poor and low-performing students tallying better test scores than those in mighty Wake County’s schools?

Experts both in and out of the WCPSS have given The Carolinian many reasons for the stunning slack-off - CMS has more disadvantaged students, gets more federal dollars for those students than Wake, and was under threat of court sanction if it didn’t improve those scores - but those who have been close to the system over the past twenty years all point to the same problem.

WCPSS, which should have not been beaten given its past success, lost focus, and stopped developing strategies to help black students excel.

But before anyone in Wake’s African-American community starts pointing fingers, some of those same observers hasten to add that it has been a long time since real pressure has been brought to bear by blacks on the school board for better results.

In effect, African-Americans, lulled by WCPSS past success, lost focus too.

The ironic result is perhaps the worst timing for both factors to be evident. A new Wake School Board will be sworn in on December 1, and the new five-member majority, led by veteran member Ron Margiotta of Southwestern Wake’s District 8, has already made it clear that the days of busing for socioeconomic diversity are numbered.

And while most observers note that because Wake County’s still unresolved growth challenges - with a new report this week indicating that while projected student growth has slowed down because of the poor economy, the county still has to contend with daunting numbers - changes to the system’s busing plan are at least two years off, Margiotta suggests that neighborhood school assignments can be up and rolling by 2010-11.

That’s next school year.

And if the current WCPSS staff has a problem delivering on this and other pending new changes, Margiotta told The News&Observer recently, “…we’ll get people who can.”

To illustrate their counterpoint to Wake’s well-established track record and research that student diversity contributes mightily to improved academic performance in black and Hispanic students, Margiotta and his four newly-elected cohorts - John Tedesco, Chris Malone, Deborah Prickett and Debra Goldman - have used similar data made public prior to the state report card that confirmed that black students in the system were not doing as well as they once were.

“Shuffling kids to balance out numbers, test scores, and income ONLY waters down the real problems to the point where we can no longer identify or then solve them,” Tedesco, who won a landslide victory in his District 2 runoff last week, says on his website.

“Together we can find ways to help our most challenged students and not just hide them among better test scores in other locations.”

“We must do more to help economically disadvantaged (ED) students,” touts District 9’s member-elect Debra Goldman. “We have already learned that the answer to helping these children cannot be found on a school bus. We must embrace more innovative approaches to teaching these students and increasing involvement among their parents.”

District 1’s Chris Malone concurs with his new colleagues, suggesting not only that going back to neighborhood schools would not only be best for all students, but taking school buses off the road “…that causes more traffic which causes increased pollution, “ would also be a bonus.

The depressing state report card, along with the devastating SAS Institute “EVASS” report that raised even more troubling questions about Wake’s recent black student achievement efforts, now codifies the “Conservative Five’s” campaign rhetoric.

So African-Americans now have two challenges in the face of daunting change as of December 1: preventing the racial and socioeconomic resegregation that a neighborhood schools policy will bring, and demanding of the same board measures that will ensure a greater measure of educational progress and excellence on the part of black students.

To understand how to achieve both, Wake’s black community must first realize how things got to where they are.

Part 1: How Did Charlotte Schools Top Wake?

Part 2: Wake Schools Lose Focus on Diversity

Part 3: Wake Schools' Bid to Help Black Youth

Special thanks to Cash Michaels and to Paul Jervay Jr. publisher of The Carolinian for permission to re-post.