Both the Great Schools in Wake Coalition and the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children came out with press releases last week criticizing the Wake County school board majority's actions.

In the GSIW press release, the group cites a statement released last week by a group of local and national researchers such as Richard Kahlenberg of the liberal Century Foundation and Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. The researchers urge the school board to reconsider its decision to abandon the diversity policy.

North Carolina charter schools made the news last week with a pair of reports with vastly different viewpoints.

A report from the John Locke Foundation, a conservative Raleigh think tank, said that 150 traditional schools across the state would be forced to close if the State Board of Education extended new charter school performance standards to all public schools. In the Wake County school system, that would include three regular schools and one alternative school.

The Locke Foundation argues that it's unfair to hold charter schools to stricter standards than traditional public schools. New standards for charter schools say they can be shut down if for two of three consecutive years they don't meet or exceed 'expected growth' in test scores and have an overall performance composite score of less than 60 percent.