The New York Times in an editorial today endorsed President Obama's choice of North Carolina's Mel Watt to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Here's what the Times had to say:

Wake County Schools Superintendent Tony Tata is touting the efforts that have increased Algebra I enrollment in middle schools.

During a press conference last week, Tata pointed to how 7,232 middle school students took Algebra I in the 2011-12 school year, up 44 percent from 5,027 students the prior year. At the same time, he pointed to how Wake's passing rate on the Algebra I EOC exam (including the scores of high school students) rose 1.1 percentage points to 86.1 percent.

"That’s good news all around," Tata said. "We added 2,000 students. We used the predictive tool (EVAAS) and we increased proficiency. My hat is hat off to our algebra teachers and to our middle and high school principals who really made this a focused effort going forward.”

Is the Wake County school board looking after its interests or being a bully by joining the lawsuit against the proposed online charter school?

As noted in today's article, the issue went 5-4 along party lines with the Democrats backing the N.C. School Boards Association's request that it take part in the litigation. The Republicans voted no, questioning the propriety of the decision.

"I think it’s anti-charter school and I don’t think we belong in it," said school board member Debra Goldman, the GOP nominee for state auditor.

Terry Stoops is telling a national audience that the Wake County school system's former socioeconomic diversity policy was a "failure" and "that school districts cannot bus their way to success."

In an online piece posted Sunday by The New York Times, Stoops, director of education studies for the conservative John Locke Foundation, compares what happened after Wake adopted the socioeconomic diversity and Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools abandoned busing for diversity.

Stoops points to how "the performance of disadvantaged students in Wake County has stalled." In contrast, he notes that Charlotte's low-income students "outperformed their Wake County peers on most measures of student achievement."

Wake County school board member John Tedesco is turning Stephen Colbert's mocking criticism of him into a tool to help him get elected as state schools superintendent.

On his campaign website, Tedesco uses a cropped screenshot of his picture on Colbert's "Disintegration" segment from January 2011. Last year, critics of the Republican board majority repeatedly pointed to the segment on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report."

"Opposition, obstructionists, and status quo bureaucrats are met head-on by John Tedesco's pledge to his constituents," says Tedesco's website. "This has caused fans and critics alike in the media to chronicle his every move; some just waiting to see what he will do next. The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, LA Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, Education Weekly, and more have joined North Carolina's news outlets WRAL, ABC 11, NBC 17, News 14, and The News & Observer in their coverage of Mr. Tedesco."

Tedesco includes a line from a not terribly flattering New York Times story in February 2011 that says "since he was elected, his ups and downs have been chronicled practically daily in the media." (The website incorrectly says it was a 2010 article.)

The New York Times is in discussions to sell its 16 regional newspapers, including three publications in North Carolina -- The Wilmington Star-News, the Hendersonville Times-News and the Lexington Dispatch.

The company confirmed the talks with Halifax Media Holdings in a release.

The Times has made a number of cost-cutting moves in recent years, including selling its headquarters building and its ownership stake in the Boston Red Sox.

The Times, along with the entire newspaper industry, has been pummeled in recent years by a dramatic downturn in advertising spending and the ongoing shift to online.

The Times recently instituted a pay wall on its website whereby readers can read a certain number of stories for free each month before they are asked to subsribe.

Smaller regional newspapers have been hit particularly hard by the decline in classified ads.
 

Are The New York Times and local Republicans overstating the role that Obama for America played in this fall's Wake County election results?

The Sunday Times Review analysis piece cites the Raleigh and Charlotte mayoral races and the Wake school board races as examples of how successful the Obama campaign was locally. The article goes on to quote local Republicans to buttress the assertions in the piece about a mass Obama for America organizing effort in Wake.

“It was very scary,” said Chris Sinclair, a strategist for Billie Redmond, the Republican candidate for mayor in Raleigh. “You don’t know what’s going on until you wake up after Election Day and go, ‘Oh my gosh, what happened?’ ”

A new report published today in Science magazine questions the effectiveness of single-sex schools such as the ones the Wake County school board voted this week to create.

"The Pseudoscience of Single Sex Schooling,” contends that there is "no empirical evidence" that segregating students by sex improves education—but that there is compelling evidence that in can increase gender stereotyping among students and adults, according to this Education Week blog post.

Wake Superintendent Tony Tata has contended that national research has shown the academic benefits of single-sex schools like the two new leadership academies that will open for the 2012-13 school year.

Is the rest of the nation watching this fall's Wake County school board elections?

As noted in today's article, that's an assertion made by state Rep. Paul Stam, the House Majority Leader, in explaining why he's endorsing school board chairman Ron Margiotta in his re-election bid in District 8.

"I support Ron Margiotta because this election represents a national litmus test in education reform," Stam said in an invitation to a July 14 fundraiser for Margiotta. "From the New York Times to the Washington Post, the Wake County School board elections will be analyzed on a national scale."

If you've ever wondered what it looks like when a new editor is appointed at a major newspaper, the new world of social media has provided.