Welcome

Specifically, do the Wake County school board elections matter to anyone outside of Wake County? In this week's CommenTerry, I take a "big picture" view of today's school board election. (Yes, the election is today.)

Bulletin Board

• Learn what politicians, left-wing economic professors, and the liberal media don't want you to know about economics, all without the confusion and clutter of complicated mathematical equations. Attend the Civitas Institute's Free Market Academy on Saturday, October 15, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the Sampson County GOP Headquarters. Register online at http://www.nccivitas.org/events or call 919-834-2099.
  
  
• The John Locke Foundation and the Triangle Lawyers' Chapter of the Federalist Society will host The Honorable David Sentelle, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, for a lecture titled "National Security Law: The Changing Role of the Courts." The event will be held on Friday, October 21, at noon at the John Locke Foundation office in Raleigh. Cost for lunch is $10.00. Register online or call 919-828-3876.
  
  
• The John Locke Foundation is sponsoring a Citizen's Constitutional Workshop on Saturday, October 22, from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Village Hall in Pinehurst, N.C. Historian Dr. Troy Kickler and political science expert Dr. Michael Sanera will discuss "What would the Federalists and Anti-federalists say about the current political and economic crises?" The cost is $8.00 per participant, lunch included. Pre-registration is strongly suggested. For more information or to sign up for the event, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.
  
  
• The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle and high school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to the NC History Project website for further information.
  
  
• Visit JLF's research newsletter archive because archives are inherently cool.

CommenTerry

Is the Wake County Public School System a district of national significance? If you listen to some school district officials, politicos, boosters, and admirers from afar, then it is easy to conclude that it is. After all, Wake County Schools has attracted attention from the mainstream media, including the Washington Post and MSNBC, as well as alternative media outlets such as Comedy Central, RT, and the Associated Press.

Of course, the media did not take much of an interest in Wake County until voters elected a conservative-leaning school board majority in 2009. The new majority incensed the old guard (and their liberal backers) by questioning their long-held assumptions, particularly the idea that the socioeconomic busing policy made Wake County the Shangri-La of American public school districts.

After the election, the malcontents responded to changes implemented by the new majority by claiming that the newcomers (a term that references multiple groups) destroyed a national model of educational excellence. Soon, well-funded organizations sponsored well-organized rallies for well-off discontents. The well-pleased mainstream media dutifully played along.

The well-informed among us pointed out that there was little evidence that Wake County ever attained the status awarded to them by the former regime. For example, Wake County does not distinguish itself on national rankings. The most recent U.S. News and World Report ranking of the best high schools in nation included only one Wake County school -- Raleigh Charter High School -- in the "gold medal" category. While Raleigh Charter is a public school, it is not a Wake County Public School System school. Among the district's 25 high schools, only four high schools -- Athens Drive, Cary, Green Hope, and Sanderson -- earned a silver or bronze medal. Similarly, Newsweek's ranking of top public high schools included Raleigh Charter High School (ranked #189). Green Hope (#206), Panther, Creek (#410), Enloe (#421), and Apex (#447) high schools also made the cut.

Moreover, only a handful of Wake County schools have received an award from the U.S. Department of Education's Blue Ribbon Schools Program. Since 2003, Davis Drive Elementary School (2006) has been the only public school in Wake County so recognized by the Education Dept. Before then, eight Wake County schools received this honor, a number that is on par with other large school districts in North Carolina. Recipients included Combs Elementary (1998-99), Brentwood Elementary (1996-97), Cary High (2001-02), Davis Drive Elementary (2000-01), Powell Elementary (1991-92), Broughton High (1983-84), Wiley Elementary (2000-01), and Enloe High (1982-83).

Should Wake County residents be pleased about the quality of their public schools? For the most part, the answer is yes. School district quality has more to do with people than policies, and in general, Wake County's schools have talented teachers and competent leaders. Does the rest of the country feel the same kind of attachment to their local public school district? According to the annual Phi Delta Kappa poll, the answer is yes. Does their attachment extend to Wake County? Probably not.

So, does the Wake County school board election matter? Yes it does. It matters to those of us who pay Wake County taxes, send our children to Wake County public schools, or have a spouse or relative who works in a Wake County public school. (The Stoops family hit the trifecta, baby.) Does the election matter to residents of Alamance County or, for that matter, Alameda County? I doubt it.

Random Thought

I like Phineas and Ferb. There, I said it.

Facts and Stats

Candidates for Wake County Board of Education:

BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 3
Kevin L. Hill
Heather Losurdo
Jennifer Mansfield
Eric Wayne Squires

BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 4
Venita Peyton
Keith A. Sutton

BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 5
Jim Martin
Cynthia Chiklis Matson

BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 6
Christine Kushner
George W. Morgan
Mary Ann Weathers
Donna Williams

BOARD OF EDUCATION DISTRICT 8
Susan P. Evans
Ron Margiotta

Mailbag

The Wake County student assignment plan offers a variety of options but continues to avoid its most important concern. How will the system determine that academic success has been achieved? The entire premise for years has been that schools with low overall passing percentages must not be achieving individual academic growth. That's not necessarily true, nor is it true for high performing schools that show only slight improvements in passing percent from year to year.

Even if the tests change, the cut lines change, or the scale scores change, a good metric will give the same quantitative value for academic growth of any student relative to all of the other students. These metrics exist, and have been proposed, but are not being employed.

With student re-assignments and the associated busing, there are indeed additional questions. Do low-performing students from traditionally low-performing schools improve when shuttled to a traditionally high-performing school? Correspondingly, as claimed, do students from a traditionally high-performing school who are shuttled to a traditionally low-performing school demonstrate gains? Do the remaining students in a traditionally low-performing school show progress when high-performing students are added to the mix? All such questions should be (or should have been) answered.

Moreover, what is the definition of a high-performing student? Would it be appropriate to say that, typically, high-performing students are defined as the upper 20% in performance across the district? A complementary definition applies to the definition of low-performing students. Would an ideal school be one in which its students had a 20% count composed within the top 20% of students in the district, the lowest 20% of students in the district, and a middle 60% that matches the district's 60%? How much improved value is there in approaching this ideal? How much detriment is there in moving away from this ideal?

The remaining questions relate to what instructional accommodations a traditionally low-performing (or traditionally high-performing) school provides to additional high-performing (or low-performing) students. Do they get their own classroom, or must they be mixed in classic one-room schoolhouse style? In the end, is classroom academic diversity or is classroom academic differentiation more important in optimizing academic growth for each student?

It also needs to be recognized that the full academic diversity, i.e., range of knowledge, in a given grade level is well over 40 to 1. A teacher with a fully academically diverse classroom will be required to have extra assistants and special tracking program for her/his students. Classrooms that are limited to the top 20th percentile, the mid 60th percentile, and the bottom 20th percentile will have current achievement ranges of about 4 to 1, a range that is an achievable challenge for a good teacher.

William T. Lynch, Ph.D.
Wake County

Education Acronym of the Week

WCPSS -- Wake County Public School System

Quote of the Week

"...but in regard to Wake County, the schools are good, still there is some little complaining among folks who do not know what they want."
-- Testimony of John O. Kelly [February 6, 1880], "Proceedings of the Select Committee of the United States Senate to Investigate the Causes of the Removal of the Negroes from the Southern States to the Northern States," 1880.

Click here for the Education Update archive.