Raleigh Charter High and four schools in the Wake County school system have made U.S. News & World Report's 2010 list of best public high schools.

Raleigh Charter came in 24th on the list that was released online at midnight. It's the second year in a row that the school has made the U.S. News top 100 list, earning "gold medal" recognition.

Next comes silver medal schools, including Athens Drive High, Cary High, Green Hope High and Sanderson High.

The school district got some bad financial news earlier this month.

As noted in today's article, Wake and other school districts that are home to charter schools are now figuring how much more money they owe to comply with a state court ruling. At issue is how it seems Wake and other districts undercounted the amount of money it needed to turn over to charter schools.

With 13 charter schools and more than 5,000 charter students this year, the price tag could be big in Wake, especially if charters ask for the money retroactively. Wake is still calculating the amount it owes.

The school poverty gap between Wake and Charlotte now stands at 20 percent.

As noted in today's Charlotte Observer, Charlotte-Mecklenburg's percentage of students receiving federally subsidized lunches this school year is at an all-time high of 51 percent. In Wake, the percentage of 31.2 percent is also an all-time high.

Supporters of Wake's diversity policy warn that abandoning it could hasten white flight and produce Charlotte-like poverty numbers at more schools. But critics of the diversity policy note how Charlotte is outperforming Wake among low-income students on state tests.

The SAS report was also mentioned in an op-ed piece urging Wake to find a better way to discipline students.

In today's op-ed piece, the authors say the new school board needs to address why Wake issues so many long-term suspensions, especially compared to Charlotte. The op-piece says both Enloe and Garner high schools gave more long-term suspensions last year than 107 of the state's 115 school districts.

Considering how much supporters of the diversity policy made Charlotte-Meckkenburg schools a boogeyman during the school board campaign, the new board members arguably are having the last laugh now.

As noted in today's article, the new 2009 state report cards show that Charlotte's black and low-income students are outperforming their peers in Wake on state EOG and EOC exams.

"We're not saying that Charlotte is the right way, but the fact that they're doing better than us shows how poorly we've been doing," said new school board member John Tedesco in the article.

The new N.C. School Report Cards are out with 2008-09 school year data.

Since these report cards have been used in the past to compare Wake and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, let's revisit the issue again. Wake gets less money and does better overall than CMS, but CMS does better among several subgroups.

Let's start with test results.

CORRECTED CMS OVERALL PASSING RATE ON BOTH EOGS. 

The return to neighborhood schools hasn't ended fights about student assignment in Charlotte.

As noted in today's Charlotte Observer, student assignment is a major factor in next month's Charlotte-Mecklenburg school boards elections. Fights over boundary lines for new schools brought hundreds of people to school district meetings and intensified interest in the elections.

Charlotte still uses diversity as a factor, albeit not a major one, in assigning students to neighborhood schools. Some candidates say CMS should "stop juggling demographics and create stable boundaries that reflect neighborhoods and communities."

But at least one candidate thinks CMS needs to do more to promote diversity.

Should Wake adopt a controlled choice model as a way to promote diversity without going to neighborhood schools?

That's the approach pitched in an op-ed piece today by Richard Kahlenberg, who says controlled choice would "honor school integration, minimize mandatory student reassignment and maximize parental choice." Kahlenberg, a senior researcher at The Century Foundation, is a big booster of Wake's current diversity policy who is trying to make the best of the recent school board election results.

Under controlled choice, the entire school district would essentially become a series of magnet schools. Parents would select from schools within a zone with the district making the selections to promote diversity.

School board candidate John Tedesco is responding to the attacks made that the new board will resegregate schools and do away with magnet programs.

Tedesco says they'll find a new way for schools that's not the Charlotte way or the Wake way. While they won't abolish magnet schools, Tedesco said they will look at changing "inequities" in the selection process that reduce the odds for gifted students in low-income communities from getting into the program.

The current selection system is weighted toward giving applicants from crowded, more affluent schools higher priority. That's because the base populations at magnet schools usually have a high percentage of poor kids.

Below is the post he sent in response to the new NAACP/CCCAAC attack on the board. At his suggestion, I'm turning his reply into a separate post.

How will a return to neighborhood schools reshape property values in Raleigh and Wake County?

As noted in today's article by Sarah Ovaska, one person told Raleigh real estate agent Anne Sherron that he's backing out of a deal because of the school board election results. She said the person had been looking at moving his family and his start-up technology company to Raleigh from Austin, Texas.

“He emailed me and said I’ve put my decision on hold indefinitely until I see whether Raleigh is going to end up like Charlotte,” said Sherron, a supporter of the diversity policy, in the article.