Donna Hargens, Wake's chief academic officer, says the school system is addressing the issue of minority underrepresentation in Algebra I.
In an op-ed piece today, Hargens says the Wake County school system has been trying to increase minority participation in Algebra I in middle schools for the past three years. She lays out a chronology of steps that have been taken since then, including using the SAS EVAAS program.
Is the Wake County school board's new economically disadvantaged student performance task force the right step toward helping those students or just window dressing to cover for the resegregation of schools?
As noted in today's article, members of the new school board majority have high hopes that the task force will come up with recommendations for improving the graduation rate, raising student achievement and reducing suspensions.
The new majority argues that the task force, along with the use of neighborhood schools, will accomplish more than what's happened under the diversity policy.
Raleigh Charter High and four schools in the Wake County school system have made U.S. News & World Report's 2010 list of best public high schools.
Raleigh Charter came in 24th on the list that was released online at midnight. It's the second year in a row that the school has made the U.S. News top 100 list, earning "gold medal" recognition.
Next comes silver medal schools, including Athens Drive High, Cary High, Green Hope High and Sanderson High.
Considering how much supporters of the diversity policy made Charlotte-Meckkenburg schools a boogeyman during the school board campaign, the new board members arguably are having the last laugh now.
As noted in today's article, the new 2009 state report cards show that Charlotte's black and low-income students are outperforming their peers in Wake on state EOG and EOC exams.
"We're not saying that Charlotte is the right way, but the fact that they're doing better than us shows how poorly we've been doing," said new school board member John Tedesco in the article.
The new N.C. School Report Cards are out with 2008-09 school year data.
Since these report cards have been used in the past to compare Wake and Charlotte-Mecklenburg, let's revisit the issue again. Wake gets less money and does better overall than CMS, but CMS does better among several subgroups.
Let's start with test results.
CORRECTED CMS OVERALL PASSING RATE ON BOTH EOGS.
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.
Voters heading into Tuesday's Wake County school board elections are getting wildly differing messages on the academic quality of the school system.
As noted in today's article, supporters of the diversity policy tout Wake's overall academic success while critics focus on the performance of the low-income students. A new SAS report that examines Wake's achievement gap could bolster the arguments of the critics of the diversity policy.
Here's the background:
The Wake Education Partnership isn't backing down from commenting on the issues in the school board races.
A little less than two weeks after a complaint was filed against the WEP, the group revisited the board races today in this week's In Context e-newsletter. This edition addresses remarks made by candidates about Wake's graduation rate, the size of Wake's bureaucracy and the achievement gap.
The Partnership addresses the complaint by saying "the newsletter will continue to cover current school topics in an effort to provide a fuller understanding of education issues."
We hope you liked the weekend feature on fixing the achievement gap. (Be sure to click on 'Related Content' on the right to see the responses).
Durham Public Schools released its first ever "State of the System" performance report earlier this month at a committee meeting. The school board adopted a policy in April to create a summary of the system's work in meeting target goals like testing, attendance, graduation and teacher satisfaction.
"There's a lot to celebrate," said superintendent Carl Harris at the committee meeting. "Another good thing about this report is that we recognize that there is much work to be done."
Out of 15 goals this year, the district met or exceeded seven: test scores for third, fifth and eighth graders, percent of schools meeting federal adequate yearly progress goals, percentage of students considered academically and intellectually gifted and vocational test performance.
The district missed six goals. Overall test score composites, graduation rates and Advanced Placement participation increased between 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 but the district did not meet their self-imposed goal. Attendance, SAT scores, and teacher working conditions survey results declined between the two school years.
The data from two other measures, a survey from parents and a survey from students, had not yet been released.
The report will be reviewed by the board again at its Sept. 24 meeting.
Other highlights:
Wake's success at narrowing the racial achievement gap on the SAT is mixed.
Wake's Hispanic students have made noticeable strides. But the district's black students are doing worse on the SAT than they were 12 years ago.
Wake's white students scored 1,072 on the SAT in 1996 — 168 points better than the black students. In 2008, white students scored 1,108 — 222 points better than their black classmates.
