Wake Schools Lose Focus on Diversity

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 2, below, was first published in the print-only newspaper November 19, 2009.

© Cash Michaels, The Carolinian

 Editor’s note - This is part 2 of a three-part series on Wake County Public Schools' lost focus on black student achievement in recent years, allowing the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School System to pull ahead in the NC report card results.
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 Two weeks after the bad news struck, David Holdzkom, assistant superintendent for Evaluation and Research for the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) is still analyzing the data, trying to figure out what happened.

 How did Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), one of the worst public school systems in the state - cited for “academic genocide” of African-American students in its racially resegregated system by a Wake Superior Court judge less than five years ago - marshal its low-performing black and poor student population to outpoint WCPSS’s historically higher achieving African-American pupils on the most recent state examinations?

 “ I wish I had an answer, “ a flustered Holdzkom, weary of the political firestorm that has already ensued over the issue thanks to the recent Wake School Board elections, replied.

 That answer by the WCPSS’s point man in charge of knowing to the decimal “what happened” to black student achievement in Wake County is damning because almost seven years ago, thanks to a concentrated WCPSS effort called “Goal 2003,” there was no question that the system had found the magic bullet in improving African-American student test scores.

 Goal 2003 focused on having 95 percent of third and eighth-grade students passing the end-of-grade (EOG) tests between 1998 through 2003. The goal, one former administrator told The Carolinian, was that by the time those pupils reached high school, a solid foundation for learning would have been set, and their pathways towards greater educational success would be paved.

 Under the leadership of Superintendent Bill McNeal, who took the helm in 2000 after over 25 years in WCPSS, Goal 2003 thrived with measurable success. When it ended, over 91 percent of targeted students were passing the EOG tests and performing at or above grade level.

 Black students, in particular, were performing over 18 percentage points better than in 1998.

 “We were killing them,” a former WCPSS administrator who asked not to be named, told The Carolinian. “We were closing the (racial) achievement gap and everybody was going up.”

 The success was even more satisfying because WCPSS was spending over $10,000 les per student than CMS, but garnering stellar results.

 The victory garnered widespread kudos for McNeal and WCPSS. The New York Times lauded the systems busing for socioeconomic diversity policy to maintain healthy schools as revolutionary against the backdrop of a nation where racially segregated, low-performing high-poverty schools were the norm.

 Goal 2003 was a coalition effort of laser-like focus on low-performing students by every aspect of the school system, buttressed by almost unprecedented public/private support from the business, nonprofit and civic communities.

 In Wake County, the victory was everybody’s.

 Convinced they had a winner, WCPSS leaders announced the kickoff of Goal 2008 in 2003, hoping that another five-year project, this time focusing on high schoolers, would really solidify Wake as the national leader in public school reform and achievement.

 However, that’s when WCPSS became a victim of its own success.

 Veteran administrators of WCPSS, who asked not to be named for this article because they were not authorized to speak publicly, confirm that almost immediately after the rousing success of Goal 2003, almost no attention at all was paid to building on the success for Goal 2008.

 “It never caught on,” said one of those administrators. “Goal 2003 was a huge deal, got close, and I don’t know if everybody ran out of energy on Goal 2008 or what.”

 “Not much happened with it.”

 That administrator concurred that if Goal 2008 had been conducted with the same vision and energy that became the hallmark of Goal 2003, then CMS would never have beaten WCPSS in the NC report card recently.

 “Good got in the way of great,” another administrator agreed, meaning that the school board and staffers rested on their laurels after Goal 2003, believing that they could ride the waves of accolades that came afterwards without the intense commitment to maintain higher achievement among black students, or the critical community partnerships that helped make that standard happen.

 If you ask both current and former WCPSS staffers why the focus was lost, they’ll tell you essentially the same thing - other pressing issues cropped up.

 In the early and mid-2000’s, WCPSS found itself having to wrestle with the fruits of its success - growth. It was projected that because of the constant influx of industry and families to the Triangle area because of the well-known quality of life, WCPSS could expect well over 4,000 new students annually, outpacing other school systems nationally.

 So devising bond issues to build new schools, designing mandatory year-round programs to make better use of existing school buildings and facilities, and frequently fine tuning student reassignment plans to keep up with the student overflow, became priorities above black student achievement.

 And if that wasn’t enough, the explosion of Hispanic families moving to Wake County put even more administrative and financial pressure on WCPSS, forcing the system to enhance its ESL (English as a Second Language) program. Not only did the Latino student population grow, but the number of special needs children - student with physical or other disabilities grew as well, administrators confirm.

 All of a sudden, not having the huge budget that CMS had, and had been wasting for years with poor results, became an issue for Wake. It needed more money to deal with these daunting, emerging issues, but couldn’t get what was needed from the Wake County Board of Commissioners, former administrators said.

 The pressures from competing areas became so great, that in 2007, the Wake School Board quietly allowed Goal 2008 to wither away within four years of its adoption, to reprioritize its agenda.

 “The board adopted its new goal, which was that all students would graduate on time and be prepared to compete globally,” WCPSS Asst. Supt. Holdzkom told The Carolinian.

 It didn’t help that after 32 years with the system, Goal 2003’s biggest cheerleader and captain, Superintendent Bill McNeal, decided to leave WCPSS in 2006 for a state position.

 The result - the slow but steady erosion of whatever progress had been previously made towards black student achievement. And with no one, including black student advocates or the press, monitoring the impact the new agenda on that population, achievement indeed began to slide.

 “It sort of became yesterday’s news in a way,” a veteran administrator said.

 The malaise since lulled WCPSS board members and administrators into the belief that while they concentrated on other system challenges, they could coast on past success.

 Veteran administrators now acknowledge that they were wrong.

 When conservative anti-student diversity candidates realized that after years of trying, 2009 was their best opportunity to take over the majority of the nine-member Wake County Board of Education, they realized that complaining about not wanting to have their children bused away from their neighborhood schools was not enough.

 Diversity policy opponents, backed by right-wing organizations like the Wake County Republican Party and Wake Taxpayers Association, began exploiting WCPSS’s softening black student achievement figures, using the dropping numbers to buttress their argument that busing for student diversity does not, despite research to the contrary, contribute to black student success in the classroom.

 The opponents began accusing the WCPSS of exploiting the needs of black children just to maintain a policy of “social engineering.” The candidates they supported echoed the cry on the stump, claiming that if they were elected, “all” children and their parents in Wake County would be empowered.

 Because few believed until it was too late that the anti-diversity forces could indeed take over the school board, less than 20 percent of voters in the four school districts on the ballot bothered to show up.

 The conservatives won, and as of December 1 when they’re sworn-in, they will begin taking steps towards ending the student diversity program to maintain healthy schools, as they promised during their campaigns.

 But they will also be shouldered with the responsibility to prove that they now have the answer to improve black student achievement in WCPSS. The new board will now assume the challenge to retaking the lead from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in better educating black and poor students.

 And the new, conservative-led board will have to do it while CMS is already well down the road of implementing plans to maintain its newfound lead.

 So the show is on the other foot in WCPSS, except that now there are new feet in those shoes.

 The question is, can this new board contend with all of the daunting challenges of previous Wake school boards, the least of which is slowing but still considerable growth, and adopt programs to increase black student academic achievement amidst the inevitable racial resegregation of the system?

 Time will tell.

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.