Magnet programs, academic achievement and regional assignment zones are among the items on today's Wake County school board student assignment committee agenda.
David Ansbacher, senior director for magnet programs, will present info on the magnet program. As noted earlier in the week, the magnet program will be impacted by how the board handles the return of more than 5,000 Southeast Raleigh kids back to the area.
David Holdzkom, assistant superintendent for evaluation and research, will present information comparing the academic performance of individual zones in the four sample maps.
Laura Evans, senior director o growth and planning, will present info on possible regional assignment zones. School board member John Tedesco, chairman of the committee, has talked about having regional zones for middle school and high school choice in addition to the smaller community assignment zones.
By the end of the meeting, Tedesco hopes to get some consensus on which of the four sample maps to have staff continue to work on.
The meeting will run from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the board conference room, 3600 Wake Forest Road in Raleigh.
Comments
Danger
Tue, 08/31/2010 - 12:45 — LongtimeLurker"David Holdzkom, assistant superintendent for evaluation and research, will present information comparing the academic performance of individual zones in the four sample maps."
Danger! Be very careful of anything Evaluation and Research says. This is the same viewpoint that delivered the "59 step analysis" to Wake County schools so they could determine who each school's lowest performing demographic group was, and thus members of which demographic groups (read race and income) should receive special services whether they individually need them or not. This same mind set has been responsible for the busing of what are inherently identified as a body of "perceived problem students" around the county so their supposed effect could be diluted across the system.
It is no accident these same demographic groups could not get equal access to quality instruction in the various schools to which they were bussed (which were just as often another "low income" school). E&R, with its Effectiveness Index, has been a vigorous player in the shell game of defining who will lose in this system. They have nothing to gain with the simplicity of their analyses being undermined by looking at students in any other way than demographic group membership or neighborhood short-comings. Everything Mr. Holdzkom will say will reify that certain areas and certain "types" of people are a problem, rather than certain academic solutions are needed.
Bill McNeal's diversity approach was NEVER supposed to be about the kids themselves having any real differences. It was about trying to balance the POWER of their parents out across the system so the various schools could effectively compete for resources. This system was intensely perverted to become what it was and the schools became extremely unequal as that perversion proceded.