The state NAACP is calling on the Wake County school board to delay Tuesday's vote on the new student assignment plan until at least after next month's runoff election.
In an open letter sent late Monday evening, the Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, argues that the vote shouldn't be held while the results of the school board election and investigations by the U.S. Department of Education and AdvancED are still unknown. The group also argues that last week's public hearing at Broughton High School is insufficient.
"Only one public hearing has been held, and a decision of this magnitude should have more," Barber writes. "The results of the election and two investigations are unknown, and the plan could be changed within a few months, wasting the school system's time and resources.
Last November, the Wake County School Board rushed through a vote to ditch the healthy school plan, abandon diversity, and move towards ideology rather than sound research. Let's not make the same mistake again."
Last week's election saw four Democratic school board candidates win outright. The fifth seat on the ballot, along with who will hold a majority on the nine-member board, will hang on a likely Nov. 8 runoff election between Democratic school board member Kevin Hill and Republican challenger Heather Losurdo.
"Our recommendation is that, yes, the Wake County School Board should wait until the election is finally settled," Barber writes. "The community is clearly saying that they want the persons making decisions for the future of their children's education to be willing to look at sound educational research, the law and lessons of history, which insist that diversity and resources are critical to student achievement."
In addition to Barber, newly elected school board members Susan Evans and Jim Martin have also called on Tuesday's vote to be postponed.
The investigations by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights and AdvancED, which accredits Wake's high schools, are ongoing. Acting on complaints filed by the NAACP, both groups have been looking at the Republican school board majority's elimination of the socioeconomic diversity policy.
OCR has been monitoring Wake's adoption of its new student assignment plan while AdvancED has given Wake until Nov. 30 to report back on the status of the changes it requested in board governance in a March report.
Throughout the open letter, Barber repeatedly praises Wake's old policy of trying to balance schools by socioeconomics, calling it the "Gold Standard Plan" or the "Gold Plan."
"Of course much of the staff's hard work and good new ideas can be incorporated into updating the Gold Plan," Barber writes. "The proposed plan, however, is fundamentally flawed because staff was forced to ignore diversity, deny history and the best educational research, and dance around the critical issue of improving educational opportunities for all our children."
Hill and the winning Democratic school board candidates have talked about doing more to promote diversity in the new assignment plan, but they've also said they're not advocating going back to the old diversity policy.

Comments
Irrelevant opinion
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 20:46 — Patriot2011This pathetic example of a leader should have no say in anything that happens in Wake County or anywhere else. This group, the NAACP, is nothing more than a subversive, anti-American group that only promotes the Negro cause. The KKK is vilified because it promote the cause of Caucasians (among other things that are simply unacceptable not unlike the NAACP) but this bunch of bozos can be on every news cast spewing their racist rhetoric and creating a decisive atmosphere. They complain and moan while offering little if anything in the way of answers, plans, or viable alternatives. Perhaps if the NAACP would work on actually contributing to society instead of taking as much as they can grab and complaining its never enough all the while they sit on their butts and take from the taxpayers and blame White people for everything. This group should be cast in the same category and the Klan. See it for what it is America.
You need to come to grips quickly
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 21:18 — FSandYOUThis pathetic example you speak of is now your new head of the school board.
Via Susan Evans.
Barber is wrong about the lessons of history
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 19:41 — carnyx“lessons of history, which insist that diversity and resources are critical to student achievement”
Rev. Barber has a serious lack of historical knowledge.
The lessons of history show that busing for diversity aka integration has been the most abysmally failed social policy since Prohibition. Consider the following:
1. Busing for diversity reached its zenith nationally in the 1980s.
2) Nationally, busing for diversity caused segregated schools by triggering white flight (and then minority “bright” flight) leaving in 2005 the proportion of black students at majority-white schools at a level lower than in any year since 1968.
3) In its thirty to forty year run, busing for diversity failed to narrow the achievement gap nationally and in Wake County.
4) Whites are now a minority in Wake County schools. Thus, busing that may have worked in past decades when whites were 70 percent or more of the school population is more likely to spur white flight now. Whites historically have left the public schools when they become the minority.
4) True minority uplift will only come through minority self responsibility, self respect, and self agency. Where is the NAACP in this? Somewhere-sometime Rev. Barber needs to think about the need for minorities also to assume responsibility for reducing the achievement gap and the even more important behavior gap. That requires the reduction of maladaptive behaviors such as illegitimacy, crime, and lack of respect for learning.
As a compromise, the controlled choice plan gives parents some say over the assignment of their children. The plan will also retain a diversity factor in student assignments. This will last for about ten years before demographics drive all but the most defenseless and poorest whites out of the Wake County system. Then, the safety, security, convenience, and academic quality of neighborhood schools will be the only way to keep whites and Asians in the public schools.
The lessons of history.
So glad my younger child
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 14:00 — ProwlingWoofieSo glad my younger child graduates high school this year. Done with this miserable excuse of a school system, and the inevitable return of racist - uh, I mean racially motivated economic diversity - busing policies. Absolutely unbelievable that the left wing spin would cast a negative shadow on a neighborhood supporting its local schools and being able to participate in more of their children's activities and ceremonies.
Thanks, Buffet Billy and all the loonies on the left...
Rev. Barber
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 11:58 — MagLarRGCThe civil rights card and the obsese physical condition is the only way Barber would get a second look. He needs attention, that validates his miserable existence. The N&O makes sure all his needs are met by keeping him and his threats in our faces.
What a festering pile of manure....
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 09:46 — Bob_Sconce(1) AdvancEd is DONE with its investigation -- there are a handful of minor activities that the board has to engage in, but none of them touch on student assignment.
(2) I love the implication: "The NAACP can bring things to a grinding halt by sending a complaint to the Department of Ed's Office of Civil Rights." By law, the OCR *has* to investigate all complaints which, on their face, set out a colorable claim of a civil rights violation, even if there's no merit to the complaint.
...
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 11:23 — SideburnsWelcome to our future.
No headline today for the Assignment Plan Vote
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 09:22 — DijanoMMNotice that the N&O has no headline or story about the plan to proceed with the student assignment plan today. Suppress our comments and feedback so the Commandant can proceed however he wants to, whether public and/or parents agree or not. The one-sided reporting of this issue in the N&O has dropped to a new low today. N&O reporting is down to the Commandant level at this point. Cancelling my subscription and switching my news source to one of the local TV stations.
You did see that we had
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 09:41 — KeungHui (author)You did see that we had stories mentioning the plan just about every day last week and on Monday as well? We might have had a separate story about it today if the NAACP hadn't sent it's press release at 10:11 p.m. Of course all the people who insist that the coverage of the new plan has only been negative will conveniently ignore comments like this from people who thing the reporting has been promoting it.
Isn't it a miracle!
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 09:35 — FSandYOUSuppress your comments and feedback? Looks like your drivel made it onto this board, what do you think you deserve, front page coverage?
Proceed whether you agree or not? Incase you missed it, Susan and Jimmy will be taking over soon, your voice will be heard loud and clear once the angry people arrive. Go on vacation until then.
Too Bad...
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 10:04 — JanisTangothere hasn't been any opportunities to give any feedback or comment <sarcasm off
Rev. Barber, there were many
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 07:13 — DrActualFactualRev. Barber, there were many who didn't prosper under the plan that moved kids around the county like so much excess baggage. Thanks for recapping it all for us though I don't know why you haven't shared it with the rest of the county. Many have asked for node movement history but finally you can find the report on the Wake Up wake County website--click on Schools, click Civil Rights Complaint, click History of Node Assignment and there you will find a 117 page report recapping the node-by-node reassignments over time. Note that one single page of 42 rows (each row representing a node of approx. 100 kids equals 4200 kids/page) multiply that by 117 pages that totals about 426,000 kids reassigned over 20 or fewer years. Consider the fact that many students had stable assignments and were never touched by reassignment. You can approximate the avg. number of times some kids were reassigned. My favorite, you can locate a specific node number that appears repeatedly and break the data out by year to see how many different schools a family with multiple kids may have had to contend with. Consider again that many subdivisions have not been here 20 years. Now I don't know about the rest of you but if this report is an example of a Gold plan, or a good plan, I sure hate to see what he considers a BAD plan.
If 10% (from the 15%) that do not....
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 08:35 — bpuli9999get their first choice each year request a reassignment that would be a whopping 15000 students a year (and 300000 over the next 20 years). This is in addition to the forced achievement reassignments (and bussings) that are going to occur under the new plan. How many of those are going to happen? Does anyone know?
In addition, under the new plan you wouldn't even know why you did not get your first choice and there is no appeal process as of now.
This is in addition to the
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 08:41 — jeffrey1This is in addition to the forced achievement reassignments (and bussings) that are going to occur under the new plan. How many of those are going to happen? Does anyone know?
Zero.
In addition, under the new plan you wouldn't even know why you did not get your first choice and there is no appeal process as of now.
As compared to the current plan, where you are assigned to a school, you don't know the reason why, and there is no appeal process. Thanks, but I like the new plan better.
There He Is .....
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 00:47 — AgentPierceAmazing !!! Thanks for finding Rev Billy, Keung. No sooner were the votes counted and he popped up again. Outta sight, outta mind - Right?