Is it "a slap in the face" to Wake County teachers to say that some of them set low expectations for students?

That's a contention Cash Michaels makes in the second part of his series in The Carolinian looking at Walnut Creek Elementary School. In this week's article, Michaels contends that teacher morale has gotten worse since the GOP school board majority took steps such as ending the diversity policy and questioning the expectation levels set by teachers.

“I sincerely appreciate the hard work of all of our teachers and principals,” said Democratic school board member Kevin Hill in the article. “I take serious offense every time I hear a member of the board talk about a culture of low expectations (in the system) for our children. I think it’s a slap in the face to our teachers and our principals.”

Student assignment and diversity accounted for much of the questions that Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata faced Thursday night at the meeting organized by NC HEAT.

As noted in today's article, Tata talked several times about the task force that will hold its first meeting this afternoon for developing a new long-term student assignment plan. He repeatedly said that a focus of the task force will be on figuring out a way to avoid leaving schools with high concentrations of low-performing students.

"It’s clear that for me the student assignment plan really has to address avoiding high concentrations of low-performing students," Tata told the crowd. "That’s the framework and prism from which I’m addressing.”

The placement guidelines are staying the same but the training and explanation of the role of teacher judgment is changing for advanced middle school math classes in Wake County in the 2011-12 school year.

Ken Branch, senior director of middle school programs, explained today to the school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force that they don't have the data yet to make changes to the placement guidelines. But they are putting more details into the placement guidelines to make it clearer to teachers, parents and students.

But Branch also said that they're making it clear to teachers that professional judgment will only be used to place students into the courses who might not be considered ready by EVAAS. That could address concerns that some teachers have used their judgment even under the new guidelines to keep kids out who are considered by EVAAS to be ready.

UPDATE

Click here to view the 2011-12 placement guidelines. You'll see how much more detailed they are than the 2010-11 guidelines.

The issue of low teacher expectations for poor and minority students and the SAS EVAAS report came up during today's Wake County school board retreat.

Superintendent Tony Tata proposed adopting as a core belief that “all children, regardless of socio-economic environment, can be high achieving students.” In explaining the reason for it, Tata cited the EVAAS report and his conversation with a middle school teacher about math placement.

Tata said the EVAAS report showed to him there's a problem with minority and low-income students not being placed in challenging enough classes because of low expectations.

UPDATE

The board was trying to find a balance between saying it wanted to close the  gaps while not holding back high-achieving students.

The school board finished ahead of schedule today. Saturday's session has been cancelled.

Here's some more details about the Renaissance Model being used to turn around the Wake County school system's four lowest performing elementary schools.

The quick description is that additional resources, including new technology, signing bonuses and performance bonuses, will be used at Barwell Road, Brentwood, Creech Road and Wilburn elementary schools. All four schools happen to have high poverty levels but they were chosen because their passing rates were below 60 percent on state exams last year.

The issue has gotten more attention this week because the school board voted Tuesday on a $950,000 a year bonus plan for the schools using federal Race to the Top money.

The majority of the agenda for today's meeting of the Wake County school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force is slated to be on two subjects.

The task force will hear a presentation from school board member Keith Sutton about the achievement of African American male students. He's concerned about the low test scores and graduation rates for those students.

The task force is also hoping to finally get an idea of the placement numbers in middle school this year for pre-algebra and Algebra I. The group has been waiting for months since some members questioned whether the reported gains among minority students was as high as reported by staff.

The meeting starts at 4:30 p.m. at Ligon Middle School, 706 E. Lenoir Street in Raleigh.  (I know I still haven't posted about the last ED task force meeting. I'll get to it as soon as I can.)

UPDATE

Click here to view the revised agenda for the meeting, which now also includes a discussion on long-term suspensions for students with disabilities.

I'll go into more detail later but things got heated tonight after Keith Sutton's presentation.

The ensuing Q&A largely turned into a debate over student assignment and the elimination of the diversity policy, with some shouting from the crowd at John Tedesco.

The Wake County school system is touting how things have improved in the district since use of the SAS EVAAS program has increased this school year.

In a school district press release earlier this week, principals say EVAAS is helping them to better educate students and assess teacher effectiveness. Prior to the 2009 school board elections in which the new board members urged the use of EVAAS, the program got a much cooler reception in Wake.

“It’s a wonderful tool,” said East Wake Middle School Principal Nancy Allen in the press release. “With just a click of a mouse and I can find out all kinds of information about my school. That’s how I’ve got to make the decisions about where to take my school.”

Minority participation in Algebra I and the development of an equity/equality policy are on the agenda for today's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged students committee meeting.

A majority of the meeting is scheduled for discussing developing a policy on equity and equality in schools. This comes after the December discussion on Fund 6 accounts for schools.

The board will then get an update on the participation rates in Algebra I and pre-algebra in middle school. Questions were raised in November about the accuracy of the data and whether gains were overstated for minority enrollment under the new EVAAS-based placement guidelines.

UPDATE

The math numbers weren't finalized yet so the whole meeting was spent on reviewing a draft equity/equality policy. I'm honestly still recovering from this bug so I'll wait until Friday to do a recap.

There are a number of peopel who don't think the Wake County school board's efforts to get more students into Algebra I in middle school is a good idea.

During last week's board meeting, N.C. State Professor Jim Martin said he fully supports that "nothing but competency" be used in assigning students to Algebra I. He said it's "unacceptable" to make placement decisions in Algebra I based on race or economic status.

"However I must counter the myth that is being perpetuated," Martin quickly added. "You don't need algebra in middle school to be competitive in application to college."

The Wake County school board voted 5-4 tonight to immediately eliminate use of the Effectiveness Index while also unanimously agreeing to make EVAAS the primary data tool for schools.

School administrators said that the Effectiveness Index would have been ended in June. But members of the fractured board majority came back together to say they wanted to kill the program now.

The original resolution on the table called for making EVAAS the primary data tool and for ending any additional allocation of resources for the Effectiveness Index.