In case you have not been paying attention — why would you, it is positively painful — there are several candidates for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board spouting the “diversity” and “equity” code words. Big deal, you say, nothing new. Maybe. Or maybe forces have aligned to start to reconstitute the cross-county busing regime the courts struck down a decade ago. Here’s why.

First, CMS honcho Pete Gorman wants more power to re-assign students any way he wants, without push back from the community. He wants an ironclad, up-or-down policy that CMS can point to and say, “Be quiet” when parents erupt.

I don’t think Pete really cares if there is a “socio-economic diversity” component to that policy or not, but if that is the only he’ll get, he won’t fight it. Then consider all the CMS deadwood at the EdShed who very much do want such a policy and the administrative inertia points in one direction. Oh, and it does not hurt that CMS will not be asking the ‘burbs to pass another school bond anytime soon given the county’s financial situation.

Also consider that moving students from brimming Myers Park — against the will of a powerful lobby — has turned into a necessary component of ever building and populating the Uptown crowd’s much-coveted Uptown high school. You watch, this fight is still coming. When has Uptown ever not gotten what Uptown wants?

Third, consider what just happened in Wake County. Yes, the “diversity” and “equity” candidates there had their heads handed to them. Initially I thought this boded well for Mecklenburg County’s education future. Now I think exactly the opposite. What happened in Wake simply is not on the radar screen among much of Charlotte’s center-right leadership. A few, like County Commissioner Bill James, noted the results, but it seems most did not even know there was an election.

Contrast this with the diversity bloc on the Left, which is positively apoplectic across the state about the Wake results and — I’m now sensing — determined to make a stand in Charlotte in November. In fact, Maximum Leader Hood identifies national Left-wing upset with the Wake outcome. As we already know that electing Anthony Foxx mayor of Charlotte is on the radar screens of the Left nationally, there are some powerful pieces starting to move in this chess match. Grassroots turnout efforts could be massive for an off off-year election.

If so, the actual facts of what makes good public education policy could get lost in the shuffle. Hood points out the facts drive any fair-minded person in one direction:

Disadvantaged students were supposed to be the prime beneficiaries of Wake’s student-assignment policies. But in 2008-09, 47 percent of disadvantaged third-through-eighth graders in CMS scored at or above proficient on state reading and math tests (which are actually too easy to pass, but that’s a story for another day). In Wake, the relevant statistic was 44 percent. CMS also outperformed Wake among black kids (48 percent to 45 percent) and scored about the same among white kids (86.8 percent and 86.4 percent, respectively). …

…Wake’s disadvantaged students also scored lower in reading and math than their counterparts did in Guilford County (46 percent), Cumberland County (48 percent), New Hanover County (49 percent), Asheville City (52 percent), and Buncombe County (57 percent).

More generally, despite years of enforcing a controversial, outdated, and unpopular set of policies for which Wake County officials were routinely feted by national left-wing organizations, their poor kids scored worse (44 percent) than the statewide average for poor kids (48 percent).

Is Wake’s lackluster performance confined only to the younger kids? No. On the state’s end-of-course composite for high-school students, the performance of disadvantaged students in Wake (59 percent) was lower than Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s (65 percent), though about the same as the state average.

We are just going to have to sit back and see if Mecklenburg cripples itself in its ongoing race with Wake by opting for educational directives which are doomed to failure and which drive badly needed taxpayers away.