Wow, the News & Observer is leading the charge to postpone today’s Wake County Board of Education vote on a new student assignment plan.

W. Swain Wood: School Plan: Not so fast

WakeEd Blog: NAACP calls on Wake school board to postpone student assignment vote

Barry Saunders: Wake board should delay vote on student assignment plan

Patty Dressen: Testing Tata’s plan

Alan Smithee: Can’t we all agree that parents are morons?

W. Swain Wood’s op-ed is particularly entertaining.   At one point, he warns,

A choice-based assignment plan demands a level of active parent engagement that we have never had before. Parents will need to become informed consumers who rank their preferences for their child’s school assignment within the constraints of a predetermined list of five or more schools.

Well, we have never had that level of parental engagement before because the school district has never empowered (or trusted) parents to make decisions that are in the best interest of their children.  Why?  It’s because most school boards assume that parents are idiots (with the exception of “enlightened” supporters of busing, of course).
And I adore this passage, because it mentions my favorite old coot, Diane Ravitch,
Reasonable people have expressed misgivings about the plan. For some, there is a fundamental discomfort with applying a free market ideology to the public school system. As scholar Diane Ravitch recently argued in a public address at Duke, competition works well for selling consumer goods, like cars or computers. It is less appropriate as a model for public education.
Of course, reasonable people also support the plan.  For some, there is a fundamental discomfort with allowing a handful of administrators and school board members manipulate the assignment of 140,000+ kids.  I suppose oligarchy works well for controlling people, so it must be perfectly suited as a model for public education.