What do Wake County school board meetings and the Cartoon Network have in common?
The New York Times thinks both have a lot in common according to this article that was posted online Sunday night and will appear in Monday's print edition. The Times article notes the more recent developments in the Wake school diversity controversy and how the Wake School Choice Plan could be the solution.
"The (school) board is split five Republicans to four Democrats, and for the last 15 months meetings have looked like a Cartoon Network special, featuring in the lead role Mr. (John) Tedesco, 36, the most verbal member of the majority," according to the article. "He is single with no children and has lots of time on his hands to stir things up.
Since he was elected, his ups and downs have been chronicled practically daily in the media: his house was in foreclosure; he’d been interviewed by Fox News; he’d lost his job; he was a featured speaker at a Tea Party rally; the county Republican Party was asking for donations to support him; he refused to accept those donations and said he would give them to charity."
“Every day, something I said was a story,” Tedesco said in the article. “I said the school system is kind of like the Titanic, it’s hard to turn around. Next day the headline is ‘Tedesco Compares Wake County Schools to Titanic.’"
(To be accurate, he was quoted in this Feb. 1, 2010 N&O article as saying "we're going to turn around the Titanic that is the Wake County school system." That wasn't the headline for the story.)
The Times article says that Tedesco, school board member Kevin Hill, Superintendent Tony Tata and former Superintendent Bill McNeal all said that the Wake School Choice Plan is a good start and could work.
"This may be the first time these four have agreed on anything," the article says.
The Times makes the provocative statement that "advocates of the plan believe that schools balanced by achievement won’t look too different from schools balanced by socioeconomics. That’s because there is a strong statistical correlation between wealth and test scores; generally the wealthier a child’s family, the higher the child’s test scores."
Considering how the Wake School Choice Plan makes proximity a priority, it's debatable whether schools would have the same demographics as now if Wake adopted some variant.
The article says that Harvey Schmitt, president of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, "thinks that both racial and socioeconomic integration have been proxies for academic integration; that what a parent — white, black, Hispanic, Asian — wants most for a child is to attend an academically successful school; and that race and wealth have been roundabout ways to accomplish that."
It was the Chamber and the Wake Education Partnership that hired education consultant Michael Alves to develop the Wake School Choice Plan.
The article also says that Schmitt says "integration by achievement will be good for business because no matter where a family lives in the county, their children can attend a high achieving school.
“Companies can come into this market and not have to pay extra for employees to send their children to private schools,” Schmitt said in the article.
UPDATE
No front page this time. The article appeared on pg. 11 in the A section of Monday's New York Times.
Comments
If Ron Margiotta, John
Mon, 02/28/2011 - 05:17 — ChagrinedOkay, slow down there.
Mon, 02/28/2011 - 22:59 — jsneezeOkay, slow down there. You've got about seven degrees of separation between Mr. Tata and drugs/ alchohol/ teen pregnancy. Not to mention, if you've got a problem with Murdoch, this isn't the place to discuss it. The internet goes far and wide with forums on which you can criticise Murdoch all you want.
Just because someone worked for someone of less than wonderful moral standing doesn't make that rub off on them. (Heck, I'm sure most of us have at least one boss we're glad we didn't become.)
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your ends (Tata is probably of the conservative lean), I'm just finding it hard to be convinced by your means.
Interesting...
Mon, 02/28/2011 - 10:56 — Bob_SconceIt's also reported that Changined doesn't know when it's appropriate to use boldface, italics and large fonts.
I'm no fan of Glen Beck, but he should be applauded if he managed to deal with addiction.
Yeah and how Murdoch changed his political viewpoint
Mon, 02/28/2011 - 12:55 — Voice_of_Reason_He was a liberal when he went to college and found out the real world is different. Notice it says mantle in Oxford, that was back in the early 50's.
While attending university, Murdoch developed a strong liking for socialism and began looking up to Lenin, who he admired as a great man. He was also an articulate and passionate debater and for this reason, he was elected president of Oxford’s Labour Club in 1950.
Winston Churchill put it “If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”
I guess if you agree, Murdoch has a heart and a brain.
Wow I found a few more of your words about your fellow citizens
Mon, 02/28/2011 - 08:44 — Voice_of_Reason_From Chagrined : " Those marching in Washington, inspired by Dick Army and Glen Beck, the potato people, the little people, the crazy people and the 'great unwashed' "
This is the elitist attitude I find so repugnant in the left. You are above the "potato people", I get it.
BTW - Google most non-Wake specific parts of what you wrote above and you find that you are plagerizing the left wing's Neil Chenoweth and you repeat it several times in other blogs. So I guess you are a cut and paste liberal without the ability of free thought...got it.
from a "little Potato Person"
from a "little Potato
Mon, 02/28/2011 - 09:06 — CaryCurmudgeonfrom a "little Potato Person"
aka a Tata Tot!
Better yet
Mon, 02/28/2011 - 09:54 — Voice_of_Reason_A SMALL FRY (;^)-
BTW -The During Ireland’s potato famine, the British asserted, “These potato people have no morals, we don’t know what to do with them". - from the same book plagerized by Chagrined.
Yep- Don't you love civil discourse.
These "potato people" that went to the Beck rally at least cleaned up the mess behind themselves. Funny thing that never happens with the left...of course...somebody else will do it... a union guy ...get it.
Wake School Choice Plan
Sun, 02/27/2011 - 23:39 — nriemannI posted some thoughts about the achievement portion of the Wake School Choice Plan on my blog at
http://wakereassignment.info
The article also says that
Sun, 02/27/2011 - 23:37 — CaryCurmudgeonThe article also says that Schmitt says "integration by achievement will be good for business because no matter where a family lives in the county, their children can attend a high achieving school.
Well, this flies in the face of an assignment system that would make proximity the number one consideration. And with a 56% ED graduation rate, I don't think it would be possible to scatter students enough to say all of our schools are "high achieving."
Really, the NYT sends a reporter down here and this is the best they could come up with. FWIW, I think school board meetings more closely resemble the Jerry Springer show than anything found on the cartoon network.
The article says that Harvey Schmitt, president of the [chamber of commercialism]"thinks that both racial and socioeconomic integration have been proxies for academic integration;
When Kahlenberg was down here, he was very explicit in his presentation that SES was being used as a proxy for race. There is no academic integration, just look at the growing achievement gap and the "schools within schools" at magnets.
Good Lord, people haven't
Tue, 03/01/2011 - 19:32 — jenmanGood Lord, people haven't been able to live anywhere they want in the county and attend a 'high achieving'' school for years. Maybe ever. If that is truly what Schmitt is wanting, then how is this plan going to give us this?
It is the same old shell
Tue, 03/01/2011 - 20:41 — CaryCurmudgeonIt is the same old shell game... spread around low-performing students so that their failures are diluted by higher-achieving student populations.
And the Alves plan provides the perfect platform for doing this. Today, it is easy to see busing, just look for a node that is assigned far from home and you can figure out whether the assignment is based on capacity or diversity. Now imagine that a pro-dilution board takes over and changes the algorithm to put more emphasis on achievement diversity. We will never be able to tell how many kids are being bused, because the decisions are made at the individual student level... stealth busing at its finest. If I were Harvey I'd love this plan, with the right board WCPSS could continue or even increase diversity busing and the board will never have to sit through those painful (and publicized) node reassignment hearings. Plus Harvey's magnet gems are protected. Wake gets back to winning those diversity awards and getting national acclaim/recognition/whatever. All they have to do is make sure to secure and maintain a board majority that favors busing, and they have a much better system to do it than today.
Again, putting my tin-foil hat back on now...