Should the Wake County school board open meetings with a prayer?

Email records indicate that the Republican board members are more receptive to the idea of having prayer to open meetings. Democratic board member Jim Martin, who was sworn in on the U.S. Constitution instead of a Bible, cautioned against the idea.

The conversations started when school board member Debra Goldman emailed the board and board attorney Ann Majestic on Jan. 19 asking what Wake's policies were in relation to prayer at meetings.

Is the glass half full or half empty when it comes to comparing how the Wake County school system is doing academically versus other school districts?

During Tuesday's school board work session, school administrators touted how Wake is doing better overall than the state and the state's four other largest districts. But school board member John Tedesco focused more on how Wake is trailing some of those districts among some subgroups.

In addition, questions were raised whether greater funding might explain why Wake is trailing among some of the subgroups.

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.

There's a lot of work ahead for raising reading scores in Wake and statewide.

As noted in today's article, Wake's performance on the ABCs of Public Education was hammered by the new reading EOG exams. Wake's reading EOG passing rate was 66 percent in 2007-08, down from 91 percent the previous year.

But Wake is stressing that it's still better than the statewide reading EOG average of 57 percent.