The Greet Schools in Wake Coalition is warning that passage of the revised student assignment policy by the Wake County school board will turn the district into Charlotte.

In a press release today, GSIW focuses on the increase in the number of high poverty schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg since the district abandoned busing for diversity. The group points to Wake having a higher graduation rate, higher average SAT score and fewer lower performing schools under the state's ABCs standard than compared to CMS.

But is GSIW ignoring areas where CMS outperforms Wake?

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

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."

The Wake County school system has fewer employees making six-figure salaries this year than before.

As noted in today's Charlotte Observer, Wake has 103 school employees making at least $100,000 this year. That compares to 112 last year.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, which has 5,000 fewer students than Wake, has 104 six-figure employees this year. The Observer said this figure "held steady" since last spring in CMS schools.

Borrowing a phrase from Dirty Harry, is the Wake County school system feeling lucky now?

As noted in today's article, school leaders aren't thrilled that they're facing $20 million in state cuts for the coming fiscal year. But they're at least relieved that, for now, they're not looking at teacher layoffs.

"The cuts are pretty severe but I'm glad that Wake County still has some flexibility," said Keith Sutton, chairman of the school board's finance committee.

Both The Economist and Education Week had their takes last week on the fight over socioeconomic diversity in Wake County schools.

In The Economist article, the writer speculates whether Wake's future looks like that of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, where the percentage of high poverty and high minority schools has increased since the district ended busing for diversity. The article says that efforts by CMS parents in poor areas to get into wealthier schools have often been impossible to grant because of capacity limits.

"(School board member John) Tedesco bristles at the notion that Charlotte is the future; he believes that with better management and more efficient spending Wake can avoid Charlotte’s errors, and he may be right," according to the article in the British weekly. "But Wake’s school system faces a $20m shortfall, which makes the board’s task all the more daunting."

The Great Schools in Wake Coalition is going to use the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system as the boogeyman at today's Wake County school board meeting.

GSIW has asked Jim Henderlite, a member of the CMS Equity Committee and current board member of the Swann Fellowship to be one of today's speakers. Swann opposed ending busing for diversity in Charlotte.

Members of the old Wake school board had passed out Swann's reports about resegregation in Charlotte to justify keeping the diversity policy.

You can add Newsweek to the list of national publications that's putting an unfavorable light on the Wake County school board' majority's efforts to end the diversity policy.

In an item that will appear in the March 29 issue of Newsweek, Tony Dokoupil suggests that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan take a closer look at the claims of resegregation going on in North Carolina's public schools. He notes Wake along with the state NAACP complaint against Wayne County's schools and the increase in 90 percent poverty schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg since the district ended race-based busing.

"And last month in Wake County, a newly elected school board voted to end an income-based diversity program that has been copied across the country," Dokoupil writes.

Wake County school administrators are touting a reduction in the district's high school dropout rate.

In a press release today, school officials say that high schools reported a dropout rate of 3.47 percent for the 2008-09 academic year, the lowest rate since 2003-04. Figures show that 1,430 students dropped out last school year, compared to 1,689 the previous year.

The press release also says that the for the first time since 2000-01, dropout rates for each racial//ethnic group declined as compared to the previous year.

Since some of you guys have concerns about there being too many posts, I'm consolidating into one post by alphabetical order the takes on Tuesday's Wake County school board vote by Chris Fiztsimon, Bob Geary and John Hood.

In a column today, Fitzsimon, executive director of the liberal N.C. Policy Watch, calls the adoption on first reading of the community schools assignment resolution as a "vote for resegregation." He writes that the board majority showed a "refusal to thoughtfully consider the ramifications of their decisions."

"The members of Gang of Five made it clear again Tuesday night that they will let nothing stand in the way of their rigid right-wing resegregationist march, regardless of what it does to our students or our community," Fitzsimon writes.