How much time should East Wake High be given to see if splitting it into four small schools is working out?
As noted in today's article, some are urging giving the school at least a few more years. But school board members are considering whether to pull the plug once a grant runs out at the end of the 2009-10 school year.
East Wake High's first small school began in 2005. The next began in 2006. The last two opened in 2007.
Tony Habit, president of the New Schools Project, which is overseeing the small schools effort in North Carolina, thinks Wake should wait three years. This would give every one of the small schools at East Wake at least five years of operation.
School board member Lori Millberg, who had been the harshest critic of the low test scores and limited academic offerings, has changed her position. She's now saying they should wait a few more years to give the two small schools that began in 2007 more time.
Contrast this with the statements that Millberg had been making about the small schools at East Wake.
"What have we gained from breaking it up?” Millberg asked at a March committee meeting.
At an April committee meeting, Millberg asked her colleagues if they would be willing to send their children to a place where they can’t get as many programs as other schools.
Millberg's youngest daughter graduated from East Wake's School of Health Science as valedictorian. Her son is a sophomore at East Wake. She said her children have done well at the school.
UPDATE
I forgot to include this in the original post. Apparently some people at East Wake High have been telling Millberg that the grant money will run past the 2009-10 school year so that's a reason to give them more time. But Habit said last week the grant definitely expires June 30, 2010.
Comments
Evaluation?
Sun, 06/07/2009 - 19:34 — klanders65Has there been a "real" evaluation of whether this model has worked? Usually when something is grant funded, there is an evaluation report that would tell how many kids were served, what the baseline data for those kids showed coming in and how much progress they made, and outcomes like how many stayed in school, how many went to college and where, etc. etc.
Is there a report like this? Surely, someone is keeping track of this. I think that is what the Evaluation and Research dept does. These are the kind of reports I find on their website. I don't see one for the New Schools project. Maybe it was done by an outside agency, but I bet their is one.
The East Wake schools sound
Mon, 06/01/2009 - 10:03 — jenmanThe East Wake schools sound like a great idea on paper, but it does disturb me that many electives and advanced courses just aren't there for those students. Also, a friend of mine who lives in that area told me that the kids aren't guaranteed the school of their choice. They can rank the order of preference, but they don't always get what they want. If they are going to break it down by 'field' and offer a narrower scope of offerings at each school then they ought to make sure that kids are getting the correct programs for what they want to study in college or trade school.
It would be interesting to see numbers on how many want each particular school and how many get it. Of those who don't get their first choice, which school are they placed in? What about a kid who wants to be an engineer or a musician ends up in the Health Science school? That could make for one miserable high school experience.
I would have thought the
Mon, 06/01/2009 - 09:15 — user1234I would have thought the "Wake is to big" crowd and how we should break up into smaller units would have come to the support of this idea of having smaller schools.
Well...
Mon, 06/01/2009 - 09:48 — Bob_SconceIn general, I think many of Wake's schools are too big. Wakefield HS, for example, has somewhere around 2700 students, which is larger than many smaller colleges (Guilford College's enrollment is about 2600) and certainly on the tail of the curve. Of the 20 largest public NC high schools, 8 are in Wake County (going by NCHSAA numbers). Schools ought to be big enough that they can offer a full curriculum with appropriate electives, but no so large that a 14-year-old freshman is totally lost. (Wakefield's "Freshman center" certainly helps with this.)
The East Wake schools are on the other end of this, with about 400 students in each. That's a good number for an elementary school, but inefficient for a high school. You can't offer many electives when there are only 100 people in a grade.
In any case, the "Wake is too big" crowd is concerned more with the size of the entire school system and its effect on appropriate local citizen control over the schools and administrative flexibility.
My HS was 2500 so I don't
Mon, 06/01/2009 - 11:10 — user1234My HS was 2500 so I don't look at Wake HSs as big but my wife's HS was 400. I thought the avg in NC was 800 (one HS per county). In VA, my HS would have been >5000 similar to the plan Gwinnett, GA was implementing to reduce reassignments by going to a few huge HSs. In Ga, we had a HSs from 1 to 4A but here they seem to want them all to be the same size (e.g. 2000) maybe to cut down on transportation of sport?
So, maybe four schools is too many ... many two 800 schools would work better ..
??????
Mon, 06/01/2009 - 08:18 — choice4allHow do these people sleep at night. Really! It is unforunate that the thread goes into more depth than the article. Conecting the dots so that everyone knows that Millberg is taking care of herself first and the heck (not what I really want to say) with everyone else.So 50 parents can change your mind? Hundreds of parents, County commisioners and a Wake County Judge could not? You redfine the family unit by forcing 30,000 to attend FYR schools and you are worried about 50 people not getting their courses? Someone should boot these people out before the elections they are really nauseating.
typical hypocrit!
Mon, 06/01/2009 - 06:11 — AngelaWoooh la, Ms. Millberg, it's worked for YOUR children so keep it??? is this the same woman whose comments about Leesville were in the realm of "we can't listen to the loudest people"??