Terry Stoops says that Charlotte-Mecklenburg winning the Broad Prize shows that Wake County schools are "playing catch-up" to the often maligned school district.

in his weekly education update on Tuesday for the conservative John Locke Foundation, Stoops points to how people have taken frequent shots at CMS for its decision to move to neighborhood schools. One example he cites is how UCLA Professor Gary Orfield criticized Wake's elimination of the diversity policy in 2010 and said that "my feeling is that it's very important for people in Wake to drive over to Charlotte and see what's happened."

Stoops points to how Charlotte's low-income students outperform and outgraduate their Wake peers. He also points to how Broad praised Charlotte's efforts to target more resources into needier schools.

"So, I encourage people in Wake County and elsewhere to listen to Gary Orfield," Stoops writes. "Drive to Charlotte and 'see what's happened.' Better yet, let the Broad Foundation tell you what's happened. Charlotte-Mecklenburg has become 'a model for innovation in urban education.' Wake County is playing catch-up."

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.

It's not much of an understatement to say that people across the country are waiting to see what the Wake County school board does today with the resolution that would dump the diversity policy for neighborhood schools.

Newspapers and television stations around the country are running the Associated Press story about today's school board vote on the community-based school assignment resolution. This comes after the Sunday New York Times article.

Gary Orfield, a UCLA professor who studies busing and civil rights, warned that abandoning the diversity policy means Raleigh can expect to see some of the same impoverished, troubled schools as Detroit, Philadelphia, New York and Chicago.

It looks like the world will hear about what's happening in the Wake County school system in the Sunday edition of The New York Times.

The Old Grey Lady has posted the story on its web site today. It isn't nearly as glowing about the school system as compared the 2005 Sunday front-page story about the diversity policy.

“My feeling is that it’s very important for people in Wake to drive over to Charlotte and see what’s happened,” said Gary Orfield, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies school busing, in the article.