The Wake County school system is taking some more steps to address the concerns raised by Eastern Wake residents that not enough is being done to help schools in their area.
As noted in this article Wednesday in the Eastern Wake News, the school system will conduct curriculum audits at Hodge Road Elementary, Knightdale Elementary, East Wake Middle and Knightdale High School. The audits, which Wake will hire an outside company to perform, would cost between $15,000 to $20,000 per school.
These audits were proposed by Deputy Superintendent Cathy Moore at the Oct. 11 meeting of the school board's student achievement committee.
Moore told board members the review will allow a team to see how a school is educating its students and make recommendations for improvements. Moore said it allows them to get a "deeper look into their program delivery."
The idea of curriculum audits for individual schools was first pushed in 2009. Fewer audits have been done in recent years.
Moore pointed to how audits had been done in the past at schools such as Wilburn Elementary that later saw academic improvement.
Moore told committee members that she had discussed the idea with the Knightdale 100 and the group supports the idea.
"The people in the area are begging us to do something more," said board member Debra Goldman. "This would be a great way to target them."
Board member Jim Martin also said the audits are a good idea. He suggested using a Western Wake school as a baseline to compare the Eastern Wake schools against.
"There's a lot of East Wake vs. West Wake concern out there and we would be blind to ignore it," Martin said.
Moore said she'd look and see what western Wake schools have been audited. If none are found, Martin asked that they contact schools in that area to see if any would be interested in being used as the control group.
Comments
Isn't it interesting
Tue, 10/30/2012 - 08:27 — occum_sharpethat they're hiring an outside group to tell them what's going on inside their own schools? Sounds like they need stronger leadership in the curriculum area. When a school is successful everyone is stumbling all over themselves to take credit and get a photo op. What about all the academies and special schools? Any of those in Eastern Wake? The Eastern Wake schools might as well be in Eastern Afghanistan as far as Central Office is concerned.
What can't a group from Central Office perform
Mon, 10/29/2012 - 12:28 — Athey01an internal review and come up with some recommendations? This is not rocket science, the problems are obvious. The solutions are obvious. Rather than wasting money on a bunch of consultants, I would propose we use that money to implement the solutions, i.e. smaller class sizes, recruit/transfer your best principals to the schools, performance based pay for teachers, and teacher retention bonuses. Wow, consulting is fun.
Central ofice has been cut to the bone
Mon, 10/29/2012 - 22:32 — realisticCentral office has been cut to the bone. Moore probably has to hire out becuase there is no one to spare to do it.
Because you would...
Mon, 10/29/2012 - 15:27 — bpuli9999be the first one to cry foul if the results are not what you want them to be. There is a reason audits are conducted by "independent" third parties. Although, the extent of their independence is doubtful.
From my limited experience with "independent"
Mon, 10/29/2012 - 16:23 — Athey01third parties, they typically interview the various stakeholders in the company. The consultant would ask the various stakeholders what are your main problems in achieving your goals and what tools do you need to achieve the goals. Afterwards, the consultant would summarize the comon problems and the common solutions and present them to upper management. Management would review the report and realize that if they had taken the time to ask the same questions, they could have a saved a sizable amount of money.
In Mr. Hui's post above, there was a reference to an article in the Eastern Wake news in which a child advocate group proposed a task group composed of parents, teachers, and staff to develop an action plan to address this issue. Apparently, it made more sense(?) to spend $15,000 on an independent third party.