Rallying supporters of the new school board

or as John Tedesco put it a school system that challenges our most gifted and raises up our most vulnerable. The goal is "achieving academic success for all children" and belongs 1st where the new BOE wants to put it.

As far as having closing the gap up there on their overhead - closing the gap was the #1 recommendation from the curriculum audit done a few years ago and implementing those recommendations is already in the Superintendent's goals. The goal is not the source of debate, the methods of achieving the goal are.

My understanding is that at first the justification for going for diversity was it would help low-income students, then when data supporting that didn't pan out, the justification became healthy schools, now I also see some give the vague justification of raising appreciation of diversity. We have meandered away from what the focus needs to be - education of and achieving academic success for all students. What matters is that students are failing - some are failing in 20% F&R schools, some in 40% F&R schools and some in 60% F&R schools. A larger percentage fail in some 15% schools than in some 40% schools. My home county is 50% ED so could never meet the current WCPSS assignment policy no matter how much they bussed and balanced. Instead they have focused on how to actually educate all students instead of where to assign them. To me balancing schools is like a crutch (and a smokescreen). If the crutch is not there you have to figure out how to actually walk or the fact you are falling down becomes a lot more obvious.

We hear about how "we have no bad schools" (I think people at certain schools would debate that) and our SAT scores are better than XYZ district, but I sure don't hear we are rocking on closing the achievement gap with our diversity policy. Why? Because we are not, in fact it is the largest in the state.

If you've heard crickets - you are not listening. People have provided information about a number of possible approaches. Detailed plans on exactly what it all will look like will take time, especially as people want a voice in the process. As it is people are up in arms about how quickly they moved just to step 1 - amend the assignment policy. Generally, a policy comes first then the implementation plan. If the BOE said right now here's how it is all going to be laid out, people would be screaming they didn't have a say.

John Tedesco mentioned the cluster model and asked for feedback. I hope people who support that concept will speak publicly.

Oh lord. Here we go. Dog chasing the tail. 

"It seemed like the diversity policy was NOT created to primarily benefit at risk kids but to prevent wide disparity in wealth between schools. "

You say: to prevent wide disparity in wealth between schools. So, why would we want to prevent wide disparity in wealth if not to help kids who are low income, which this system seems to think will automatically fail? Why all the cries of resegregationism if not because of the fear that failing kids will fail faster without the diversity policy? This system believes low income = at risk. Avoiding concentrations of low income is what the diversity policy is about, right? Why do we want to avoid concentrations of low income? This system thinks low income is at-risk. They believe this policy will help low income/at risk kids by preventing concentrations of any (insert label here). 

All that said, I am a firm follower of TPG's logic. Low income should not be assumed failure. Let's find the kids who actually are failing and help them. Really help them. Let's find the kids who are helping themselves, in spite of the odds and support their efforts. Let's find the kids who are so bored out of their gourd with this one-size-fits-all-and-helps-few system and challenge them - avoiding trouble there too.