This News & Observer story summarizes the upcoming race for the Wake County school board. Many see the fall election – 4 seats are up for grabs – as a referendum on the system’s policy of busing kids out of their neighborhoods in order to achieve economic “balance” in the schools. Even one committed supporter of the policy acknowledges that Wake residents may have had enough.
“Maybe the tide has turned, but people forget our policy has helped a lot of schools,” Millberg said. “There are people who get our policy and realize it helps them and that a different policy would change things.”
Millberg is one of the board members who rejects calls to study the policy’s impact on student achievement, saying that she knows it works and doesn’t need a study.
Then came this Queens University study, which compared the Charlotte/Meckleburg system with Wake. Charlotte/Meck doesn’t bus. The results are clear and eye-opening. From the News & Observer (emphasis is mine):
“The biggest conclusion I drew is that you can’t look at school assignment as being a silver bullet,” said Cheryl Pulliam, the report’s author and director of the Public Education Research Institute at the Cato School of Education at Queens University of Charlotte. “If it were, one district would have a significant advantage over the other, and it doesn’t.”
Today’s Carolina Journal Exclusive takes a look at some of the pro-neighborhood schools groups that have formed to field candidates for the board.
