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.