The Wake County school system's two new single-six leadership academies could face one more hurdle in the form of possible legal action from the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

As noted in today's Triangle Politics column by Thomas Goldsmith, ACLU officials say they'll decide by next week whether to take further action on the single-sex schools. Currently, the ACLU is pouring through a voluminous pile of system records it requested.

The ACLU is trying to determine whether the single-sex schools meet the constitutional goals of having an “exceedingly persuasive justification” and showing that “the classification serves important governmental objectives and that the discriminatory means employed are substantially related to the achievement of those goals.”

It looks like we have a split between Wake County school board member Keith Sutton and the Coalition of Concerned Citizens for African American Children over the newly created single-gender leadership academies.

In a press release today, CCCAAC calls the creation of the schools "a troubling decision" with "the hurried approval of the academies (as) another example of the reckless decision-making by the board majority." It questions the academic effectiveness of single-sex schools that Sutton joined the majority in backing.

CCCAAC doesn't buy Superintendent Tony Tata's argument that the schools will be cheaper than the ones they're modeled on from Guilford County. Also citing how those Guilford schools are almost all black, CCCAAC calls them "costly schools to resegregate and reassign without community input."

CCCAAC also complains about how the academies will displace special-education students. They also complain that the money spent making the academies ready "means that other school projects, such as repairs to existing facilities, are being placed on hold."

Neil Riemann, an attorney and critic of the Wake County school board's elimination of the diversity policy, says school leaders are making "bad" and "shoddy" arguments to federal investigators to justify the district's actions.

In a post Sunday on his Wake Reassignment blog, Riemann contends that the school district's recent response to the Office for Civil Rights doesn't prove the diversity policy was a failure. He acknowledges that Wake has lost ground academically but says the arguments made to show that the board majority acted reasonably "are not very good."

Among the many points in the OCR response, Riemann deals with the most controversial one in which Wake contended there's a correlation between decline in academic performance and longer commutes to school.

A discussion Thursday about how to help improve the performance of African American male students turned into yet another fight over school diversity in Wake County.

School board member Keith Sutton gave a presentation during Thursday's ED task force meeting highlighting the racial achievement and graduation rate gaps between black and white students. Click here and here to see what was handed out.

The ensuing Q&A turned into a discussion of the elimination of the diversity policy, with some shouting and heated words.

Using the latest test data, the conservative John Locke Foundation is challenging the argument that the diversity policy is giving an extra boost to Wake County's academic performance.

In a press release today, Terry Stoops, education policy analyst for the Locke Foundation, says the data shows that Wake's academic gains this year lagged behind those of the state's other urban districts. Diversity policy supporters have been trumpeting test gains to argue that the school board majority shouldn't have discarded the policy.

Stoops uses the previously released preliminary No Child Left Behind data. But Stoops said his analysis is also based on an a leaked copy of the state ABCs of Public Education test results.

The Wake County school board would make a statement if it chose a non-educator to become superintendent.

As noted in today's article, policy revisions recommended by the school board's policy committee would take advantage of changes adopted by the General Assembly in 2001 to allow non-educators to become superintendents. But few school districts in the state have taken advantage of the change.

Guilford County Superintendent Maurice Green was about the only non-educator to come to mind for people. Green was Charlotte-Mecklenburg's in-house lawyer and later deputy superintendent before becoming superintendent.

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.

Has the Wake County school system been deliberately not offering some students access to Algebra I in middle schools to boost test scores?

That's the charge made by Tony Gurley, chairman of the board of commissioners, in today's article. It came after commissioners got a presentation Monday about the SAS EVAAS report.

Much of the discussion Monday focused on how the report found that half the  Algebra I ready student in Wake were not taking the course in middle school.

You can add Communities in Schools to the groups now taking shots at the diversity policy with the new school board members set to take office.

Neither the state nor local chapters of the group had publicly complained about the diversity policy before even though many of the students they help are among those directly impacted. But relations have frayed between CIS and Wake, as shown in today's op-ed column by Mike Stephens, chief operating officer of Communities In Schools of North Carolina.

"Busing our students is not the only way - or necessarily the best way - to make sure North Carolina is achieving equality in its public schools," Stephens writes. "We do not have to look farther than the Wake County school system to understand this."

Guilford County Schools' Mission Possible program is often cited by school board critics in Wake County who argue that intensive funding is a better way than busing to help high-poverty schools.

Well, the newly released state ABCs test results may put a dent in that idea. Guilford County has 10 of the state's 75 low-performing schools this year, meaning the school's passing rate was under 50 percent and it didn't meet growth expectations.

Of the 10 low-performing Guilford County schools, nine are in the Mission Possible program. The passing rate was as low as 29.7 percent at one of the Mission Possible schools - Oak Hill Elementary.