How significant, if at all, is it that the gap has narrowed between the Wake County school system's graduation rate and the state average?

It was one of the points of contention during Tuesday's school board retreat as the board reviewed this draft strategic plan. Superintendent Tony Tata talked about how pg. 6 shows the state's graduation rate has risen since 2006 while it's dropped in Wake.

"That’s an alarming trend there where we are flat or marginally decreasing while the state is steadily increasing," Tata told the board.

The Wake County school board agreed to one change in the draft strategic plan this afternoon while having some heated discussions on other areas.

They board agreed to modify the vision section of the plan to add in the words that students will "be accountable partners" in their education. it was added after board member Jim Martin said that students need to have some responsibility in the issue.

I'll get into more on the other issues later, but the board disagreed about whether to leave in the draft strategic plan the use of teacher merit pay and the expansion of academies. Board members also disagreed on the significance of the rest of the state catching up to Wake's graduation rate.

The board is taking a lunch break before resuming discussion at 2:45 p.m. on board-superintendent communications.

UPDATE

Staff will bring back the revised core mission, vision and beliefs to the June 5 regular meeting for a vote.

The full strategic plan will be pulled from the June 5 action meeting. School board chairman Kevin Hill said individual members or groups of two can meet with Chief of Staff/Chief Transformation Officer Judy Peppler to go over any suggested wording changes before discussing at the June 5 work session.

The strategic plan, improving board communications and honoring students and employees will be on today's Wake County school board agenda.

The board will open today's retreat by spending two hours discussing the strategic plan that AdvancED wants the district to complete. The board had a lengthy discussion on it at the December retreat.

The next two hours of the retreat will be spent on board communications and protocol, detailing what should happen between board members and board members and staff. The tense exchanges in recent months are what prompted school board chairman Kevin Hill to make his call for proper decorum last week.

Wake County Superintendent Tony Tata found himself being challenged Saturday by the new school board members on his idea of giving school autonomy based on student achievement.

Tata supports using what's called "managed performance empowerment," a hybrid between giving principals no control and total control over how they run their schools. It's part of his draft strategic plan that he's hoping the board will adopt.

"Called Managed Performance Empowerment (MPE), the theory of action grants flexibility and decision-making authority to schools based on successful performance," says Tata's draft strategic plan. "From a school support perspective, we will measure our school performance based first and foremost on student achievement and place schools along a continuum of performance to best target our support and resources as a district."

It took a lot of discussion on Saturday before the Wake County school board finally agreed to modify the district's core beliefs.

The board made two changes from this original document approved by the old board in February. This new set modifies the wording about academically challenging students and the role of teachers and principals in student achievement.

The impetus for the changes came from the new school board members.

The Wake County school board will dive into the details of Superintendent Tony Tata's draft strategic plan during today's all-day retreat.

AdvancED required Wake to develop a strategic plan as one of its seven action steps when it put Wake's high schools on accreditation warned status in March. The old board started the process when it adopted the mission, vision and core beliefs for the district.

Now it's up to the new board to finish the process.

Has the Wake County school system done enough to satisfy AdvancED's concerns to keep the accreditation for the district's high schools.

As noted in today's article, school officials say in their progress report that they've completed five of the seven action steps laid out by AdvancED in its March report. School officials say the other steps are in progress of being completed.

"As the above progress report clearly demonstrates, significant work has occurred over the months since the AdvancED review to improve the governance and cohesiveness of the Wake County Public Schools leadership team,” according to Wake’s progress report.