You can probably add Ann Denlinger, president of the Wake Education Partnership, to the list of people who will be invited to speak at a meeting of the county commissioners.

The request is coming from Commissioner Joe Bryan, who was impressed by a presentation Denlinger made at a Tuesday forum sponsored by the Knightdale 100, a new grassroots group that wants to improve education in Eastern Wake.

Denlinger noted how Knightdale High had 11 Advanced Placement courses while Enloe High had 28 of them. Denlinger told the crowd about the need to offer more AP classes.

On the heels of hearing William Sanders present the SAS EVAAS report, Wake County commissioners may next hear from Richard Kahlenberg.

As noted in a recent article by Thomas Goldsmith, Commissioner Stan Norwalk successfully got a motion approved last week to explore bringing Kahlenberg in to make a presentation. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, has been a strong supporter of Wake's diversity policy.

After last fall's school board election, Kahlenberg made a pitch for a controlled-choice diversity model in lieu of going to neighborhood schools.

Wake County commissioners will tackle today the findings of the SAS EVAAS report that raised questioned about the performance of minority students in the school system.

William Sanders, senior director of the EVAAS K-12 division, will discuss the SAS EVAAS report that became a last-minute issue in the school board election. The presentation, which was originally supposed to take place in November, is scheduled to be given at today's work session.

Tony Gurley, the Republican chairman of the commissioners, has been the one pushing for the commissioners to hear the presentation. Some of the Democratic commissioners have complained about why their board is discussing the report.

It looks like County Commissioner Tony Gurley wants to play being a school board member.

At Gurley's urging, the county commissioners had scheduled a presentation on the SAS report at today's work session. The presentation was delayed when William Sanders from SAS was unable to attend.

At least some of the Democratic commissioners are unhappy that Gurley is pressing them to discuss the SAS report instead of leaving it to the school board. The report is perfect for Gurley, a Republican commissioner and frequent critic of the outgoing school board. 

Wake is now jumping into using the EVAAS program.

As noted in today's article, administrators said they're moving to get passwords into the hands of principals and other school personnel. It's a change from when a school had to request access to EVAAS to be signed up.

Wake still has a long way to go to catch up with other school districts in terms of using the program, which is free of charge to districts.

It looks like the school board will hear from both sides after all about the SAS report.

Today's presentation comparing the SAS EVAAS model and the school system's Effectiveness Index was originally only going to be presented by staff, including Asst. Supt. David Holdzkom.

School board member Ron Margiotta said he sent a letter to Chief Academic Officer Donna Hargens complaining about no one from SAS being invited to attend.

Is it just a "technical disagreement" how Wake and SAS assess the performance of low-income students?

As noted in today's article, the SAS report is adding fuel to the school board races. One thing that has drawn a lot of attention is SAS questioning the way Wake normalizes the performance of low-income students when assessing school performance.

Asst. Supt. David Holdzkom said Wake isn't alone in making adjustments for low-income students. He called it a "technical disagreement" between Wake and SAS, which doesn't make that adjustment.