More to come later, but there's some news out of today's Wake County school board student achievement committee meeting about changes in the grading policy and single-subject acceleration.

Following a lengthy round of questioning, staff will look at revising the grading policy to drop wording saying that attendance will be excluded from the academic grade. Staff will also develop a list of academic and non-academic related behaviors after committee members indicated concern about staff wanting to omit work habits from the academic grade.

Deputy Superintendent Cathy Moore also announced today they're easing back on the suspension of single-subject acceleration. She said students who currently receive single-subjection acceleration would be grandfathered for the 2012-13 school year.

Parents of academically gifted students have been in an uproar since staff suspended single-subjection acceleration because of the implementation of the common core. This suspension most typically affected elementary school students in math such as the Webb family, who filed a grievance after their rising fifth-grade daughter was told she couldn't take sixth-grade math.

In line with the new common core standards adopted by the state, the Wake County school system will implement new math course names and sequencing for the 2012-13 school year.

During Tuesday's school board meeting, staff laid out how the new math sequencing, which in middle school would be used with EVAAs to place students, would look. Staff also gave new data that could put a different spin on the arguments used by critics who've said that using an EVAAS predictor score of below 80 percent is too low.

All five member school districts of the Triangle High Five are supposed to use the same sequencing and course names.

SEE UPDATE AT END OF REPORT FOR LINKS TO HANDOUTS

How worried should the Wake County school system be about how the new student assignment plan is impacting the magnet schools?

As noted in today's article, the Democratic board members expressed concern Tuesday about the sharp decline in magnet applications. They also raised concerns that not enough academically identified students got accepted into Carnage and Ligon middle schools, which operate the AG Basics magnet theme.

“It seems to me that demand for magnets has gone down by half,” said new Democratic school board member Christine Kushner in remarks to staff members. “I’m concerned about that decline. I hope it’s something you are paying attention to.”

The repeated theme at last week's ED task force meeting is that all children can succeed but it's going to take a lot of hard work from the school system to help the students out.

The tenor of the Wake County school board's economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting was set when this YouTube video of Sir Ken Robinson was shown to a packed room of teachers and principals.

Robinson contends that the current educational system is based on the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment and the environment of the Industrial Revolution. He argues that most people don't benefit from that model, creating the plague of ADHD.

Project Bright Idea will take center stage on the agenda at today's Wake County school board economically disadvantaged student performance task force meeting.

In a nutshell, the goal of Project Bright Idea is to increase the number of children from underserved populations in gifted and academically challenging programs. The idea is the students are more likely to excel and perform as if they're gifted if high expectations are set for them.

While begun as an elementary school program, this Duke Today article talks about how elements of Bright Idea have been incorporated at Fuquay-Varina High. It's credited with helping narrow the school's racial achievement gap.

It took some guts to speak in support of the new Wake County school board majority at Tuesday's meeting.

Of the 48 people who spoke, only 12 praised the new board. Most of the speakers and audience consisted of supporters of current policies who were vocal when they disagreed with speakers.

Russell Capps, president of the Wake County Taxpayers Association, drew jeers when he cited the recent Civitas Institute poll to argue that the the overwhelming majority of parents support the new board's efforts.

New Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta has a busy 24 months ahead of him before he retires.

As noted in today's article, Margiotta, 71, doesn't plan to run for another seat on the board when his term expires November 2011. He's not taking excuses that changes are too hard to make.

"I keep hearing people say it's too hard to change things," Margiotta said in the article. "That the district is too large to make changes. I don't accept that. We're going to put our noses to the grindstone."

Your child's elementary school might soon be using a new screening system to assess reading skills.

Staff briefed school board members last week on their plan to begin using the DIBELS Data System to assess the reading skills of students and hopefully intervene before problems get worse.

While staff is recommending that elementary schools use it for the 2009-10 school year, it's not being mandated. That drew some concerns from board members.

We've got four local groups in the running for the state's three open charter school slots.

As noted in today's article, members of a State Board of Education committee are supposed to turn in by today their rankings of the 18 applicants. From that list, six will be chosen for the next round of consideration.

If Horizon Academy's application is approved, Sonya Bellson, a school founder, thinks they should easily attract applicants. Even though they plan to be in Louisburg in Franklin County, they'd expect to get interest from northern Wake families.

Academically gifted students are going to take a hit in the new budget.

As noted in today's article, administrators listed some of the cuts that will be made that will have an impact on the district's brightest kids. Fewer kids will be able to go to academic competitions and schools will have less AG services than normal.

Staff repeatedly said they're only doing this because of the economic conditions.