While much of the attention was focused on the combative Wake County school board elections, an equally hot fight was going on at Enloe High School over whether to move to a block schedule.

An Enloe faculty group had proposed switching to a block schedule as a way to help the low-performing students. But a vocal group of Enloe parents, students and teachers opposed the switch.

Last month, 65 percent of the faculty that voted rejected making the switch to the block so the issue appears to be dead for the 2012-13 school year. But it generated a lot of controversy along the way at the magnet school.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST FOR LINK TO PDF OF PRESENTATION THAT STAFF MADE TO PARENTS

A Bush administration official who led and then changed her mind on federal education reform will speak at 6 p.m. Monday, Oct. 3, in Page Auditorium on the Duke University campus.

Diane Ravitch is Research Professor of Education at New York University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. She has written 10 books on education, most recently last year’s “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.”

From 1991 to 1993, she was Assistant Secretary of Education and Counselor to Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. In that position, her website says, she led the federal effort to promote the creation of voluntary state and national academic standards.

From 1997 to 2004, she was a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federal testing program.

“As No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) accountability regime took over the nation's schools under President George W. Bush and more and more charter schools were launched, I supported these initiatives,” Ravitch wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “But over time, I became disillusioned with the strategies that once seemed so promising. I no longer believe that either approach will produce the quantum improvement in American education that we all hope for.

"On our present course, we are disrupting communities, dumbing down our schools, giving students false reports of their progress, and creating a private sector that will undermine public education without improving it. Most significantly, we are not producing a generation of students who are more knowledgeable, and better prepared for the responsibilities of citizenship. That is why I changed my mind about the current direction of school reform.”

Ravitch's appearance is presented by Durham Public Schools and the Duke University Program in Education. Tickets for the Page Auditorium talk are free, but must be obtained in advance. They are available on-line at tickets.duke.edu, by calling 919-684-4444.

It looks like the Wake County school system saw some overall academic gains this past school year under the state's ABCs of Public Education accountability program.

New results released at today's State Board of Education meeting show that 95 percent of Wake's schools met or exceeded growth expectations, up from 89 percent last year. Wake had 70.3 percent of schools, or 114, showing high growth and 24.7 percent of schools, or 40, showing expected growth.

Wake also had 17 Honor Schools of Excellence/Schools of Excellence, up from 14 last year. Wake also had 79 Schools of Distinction, up from 63 last year.

Wake County, along with the rest of the state, will be releasing the preliminary adequate yearly progress results today under the federal No Child Left Behind program.

As this state press release indicates, the number of schools statewide that will fall short and have to allow students to transfer out is expected to sharply rise this year. That's because the target passing rate for schools to meet AYP standards sharply rose this year in order to reach the goal of being 100 percent proficient by 2013.

The Obama Administration has talked about revising No Child Left Behind but it hasn't happened yet.

One thing to see is whether critics of the Wake school board majority may try to use this year's NCLB results in the school board elections. Some critics of the old board majority had mentioned the AYP results in 2009.

The Wake County school board may vote today on keeping tougher than state-mandated high school graduation requirements for the 2011-12 school year.

The board will vote on a recommendation from staff to continue requiring students to pass the Algebra I, Biology and English I state end-of-course exams to graduate from high school.

The board had taken a similar step in December following the staff recommendation to leave in place the requirement for the 2010-11 school year.

For you numbers crunchers, here's additional information on Wake County year-round and traditional-calendar acceptances by base school

The most year-round applicants by base elementary schools this year was at Wildwood Forest Elementary, where 67 of 109 applicants were accepted. That's compared to 52 acceptances out of 78 applicants last year.

The most year-round applicants by base middle schools was again Wake Forest-Rolesville Middle, where 242 of 265 applicants got accepted Last year, 252 of 282 applicants were accepted.

Year-round schools, student discipline and the budget aren't the only issues on today's Wake County school board agenda.

The work session that begins at 3 p.m. will include Superintendent Tony Tata giving school-by-school recommendations whether the 14 underutilized multi-track year-round schools should move to a single track for 2011-12. The formal vote will take place during the regular meeting that begins at 5:30 p.m.

You also have the interesting situation in which during the work session Tata will talk about proposed changes to the student transfer policy as a result of the probe into school board vice chairwoman Debra Goldman's case.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF POST

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata has determined that school board vice chairwoman Debra Goldman did not violate board policy when she got a paperwork-free transfer for her daughter.

As noted in today's article, Tata also said the investigation into Goldman's case and 14 other students who received administrative transfers shows that some changes are needed. In particular, Tata says Wake should have required Goldman to file paperwork and not just make a verbal request.

Going forward, Tata said he will require that all similar requests for administrative transfers, which bypass the normal transfer process, come with complete documentation. Tata said the onus is on the school system and not the parent, even when it’s a school board member, to make sure that paperwork is filed.

How much importance should be placed on high school graduation rates?

School districts weren't required to keep real graduation rate figures until the No Child Left Behind legislation went into law. It became such as big deal that the old school board had a goal of graduating every student by 2013.

The significance of graduation figures was discussed during last week's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting.

Will the Wake County school board discuss the accreditation fight with AdvancED today?

Today's work session and action meeting agendas don't include the topic. But school board member Kevin Hill said he wants it discussed so that they can come to some final decision on the issue.

The board can choose to withdraw from AdvancED, which would end the review but also cost high schools their accreditation. Officials from AdvancED say they won't be the ones who pull the accreditation, at least before they conduct their review.

UPDATE

School board chairman Ron Margiotta says he doesn't expect the board to discuss AdvancED today because the main attorney handling the case, Jonathan Blumberg, won't be at the meeting.