As the Wake County school system moves to the common core for math, what role should teacher judgment play in placing students and what criteria should be used for placement in the super-advanced track?

As noted in today's article, the school board is supposed to discuss the math placement policy on Tuesday. A number of questions still have to be resolved, such as whether a policy is needed and whether an EVAAS probability predictor of 70 percent is the right floor for placement.

But another issue to be resolved is what to do about teacher judgment.

Here's a taste of the kind of questioning that the student assignment plan could get from the new Wake County school board majority.

During last week's ED task force meeting, new Wake school board member Jim Martin grilled staff during a Q&A on how the new plan is being presented to parents. He was concerned that the choice process isn't being adequately explained to parents, especially those who are less educated.

After hearing the staff presentation about the community outreach efforts, Martin, who has been a citizen member of the ED task force, said they were "getting a lot of the 10,000 ft. story."

Two different pictures are emerging about the situation taking place at the new Walnut Creek Elementary School.

As noted in today's article, Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata acknowledged that an enrollment cap is needed at Walnut Creek to deal with overcrowding. But Tata, pointing to the additional resources provided to the school, says that Walnut Creek is "on the right track."

In contrast, Cash Michaels calls the overcrowding situation a "crime." He accuses Tata and the Republican board majority "of literally turning their backs on the growing problem there."

UPDATE

Click here for an updated version of the article in The Carolinian that Cash Michaels wrote about the crowding situation at Walnut Creek.

Wake County school board member Keith Sutton has raised nearly $24,000 in his bid to retain the District 4 seat.

A new campaign report filed this week shows Sutton had raised $23,872 as of Sept. 26 with $15,386.04 on hand. Venita Peyton's new report isn't up yet but she was at under $1,000 raised at the end of August.

The largest donors for Sutton in the new report are the $2,000 from Capitol Broadcasting CEO Jim Goodmon and $500 from Wake Citizens for Good Government.

The message coming from Thursday's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting is to accept nothing less than 100 percent placement of qualified middle school students in Algebra I.

As noted in today's article, staff said that 85.2 percent of eighth graders projected by EVAAS to be ready to take Algebra I have already been placed for the 2011-12 school year, up from 61.1 percent last year.

Central Office will work with the middle schools to get that placement rate as close as they can to 100 percent before traditional-calendar schools start next week.

The question of how the Wake County school system will respond to the high-poverty student enrollment at the new Walnut Creek Elementary School in Southeast Raleigh will be addressed at a forum Friday night.

Walnut Creek will open in August with a projected 81.4 percent of its students receiving subsidized lunches and 52.8 percent of its students not having passed the state end-of-grade reading exam. Compassionate Tabernacle of Faith and the school system are co-sponsoring a forum to discuss the selection of the principal and faculty and the expectations for the school.

"if we’re not careful, Walnut Creek will open up with a lot of struggling students and it will blow us away," said Marvin Pittman, a retired educator and head of the education committee at Compassionate Tabernacle.

You've got 29 people lined up to speak at today's Wake County school board meeting.

It looks like people are citing the discussion of the facilities utilization report, which is item 14 on the agenda, to get around the ban about talking about student assignment. Among the people citing this section on the signup sheet are Anne Sherron, Adrienne Lumpkin, Susan Evans, Monserrat Alvarez (of N.C. HEAT) and Jim Martin.

On the list of 15 speakers for off-agenda topic items, you've got more supporters of the diversity policy who likely are using other ways to bring up student assignment. This list includes:

UPDATE

School board vice chairwoman Debra Goldman said the restriction on comment on student assignment was meant for discussion on specific moves in the plan.