The News & Observer reports today that Wake school board member Eleanor Goettee is “surprised” by the results of a Queens University study that shows there is little, if any, difference in student performance between kids in the Charlotte/Mecklenburg system and those in the Wake system.
The significance in this study is that in Charlotte/Meck, kids attend their neighborhood school. In Wake, some kids are bused all over the county in an effort to “balance” the economic diversity of schools. The board has deemed that poor kids can only learn when they’re sitting next to kids from wealthier families. Evidently there’s magical pixie dust at work.
Or not. From the N&O (emphasis is mine):
Instead of busing students to balance the level of low-income students at each school, Charlotte pours millions of dollars into the high-poverty schools each year to boost the performance of academically disadvantaged students.
To compare the two districts, Pulliam looked at data from the state’s end-of-grade math and reading tests. She pulled the raw test scores for third-graders in both districts from 2002-03, the first year that Charlotte went to neighborhood schools, tracking results as these students moved on to middle school.
The report found that reading scores for Wake’s students were growing slightly faster than in Charlotte. But Charlotte’s students were growing slightly faster in math.
When it comes to academically gifted students and low-income students, the report found that Charlotte’s children were doing as well as if not better than their Wake peers in math.
But even these results don’t deter Goettee from defending the busing policy, which she says is also about teachers, and getting them to teach in high-poverty schools is tough.
“This is also a human resources issue,” Goettee said.
Hmm. And I thought it was all about the children.
