Duke University professor Atila Abdulkadiroglu is acknowledging that parental choice can lead to socioeconomically segregated schools but he argues that it can be controlled for in student assignment.

In a blog post today, Abdulkadiroglu points to the experiences in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, which he said "provided a good approximation to Wake." He said that racial resegregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg can be partly explained to parents preferring schools with higher concentration of their own race.

"However, appropriate breaks and controls can be embedded into a choice system in order to avoid segregation while giving, for example, some priority in assignment to students at their neighborhood schools." Abdulkadiroglu writes. "It is important to note that guaranteed neighborhood assignment is also likely to yield segregation along the socioeconomic and racial lines of neighborhoods."

Confirming his status as the Wake County school board member that liberals most dislike, John Tedesco is the subject of a column today by Chris Fitzsimon

In today's column, Fitzsimon, executive director of the liberal N.C. Policy Watch, focuses on what he considers to be Tedesco's inconsistency. Fitzsimon contrasts Tedesco's fiery speech against social engineering at the April 15 Tea Party rally with his willingness to work with critics and consider use of economic diversity in student assignment.

"The last ten days have brought us Tea Party Tedesco, Tempered Tedesco, and tough to follow Tedesco," Fitzsimon writes. "That ought to be enough to put the brakes on the push by the Gang of Five to dismantle the current assignment system. You shouldn't change direction if you don't know where you want to go."

Atila Abdulkadiroglu, a professor at Duke University is emerging as a key advisor in Wake County school board member John Tedesco's vision for community-based school assignments.

Abdulkadiroglu helped Tedesco with the presentation that he'll make today about potentially dividing the county into 18 assignment zones while providing school choice. Abdulkadiroglu is here today, according to Tedesco, to answer questions about the school choice component of his vision.