Never forget that from this day forward. Confronted with iron-clad proof, from a Queens University edu-prof, that Wake County’s much-lauded cross-county busing plan for socio-economic micromanagment did not and does not improve student performance, what does CMS board member Tom Tate do? You tell me:
CMS board member Tom Tate said the report doesn’t provide enough data to conclude whether CMS’s current assignment policy hurts or helps low-income students.
He said low passing rates at schools and among low-income students are reason enough to change Charlotte’s assignment policy to reduce concentrations of poverty.
“I’m not so interested in comparing what CMS is doing with Wake County,” he said. “It’s too low and we need to raise it.”
Sounds like crap to me. If we don’t know why change? What correlation does Tate have between “concentrations of poverty” and low-performance? Why the disinterest in the results of a system doing exactly what Tate and other misguided liberals think CMS should do?
Because Tate and his fellow travelers really do not view public schools primarily in educational terms, but as a political and social lever to compel the social and cultural outcomes they deem proper.
Bonus Observation: Interesting window as well on the way Wake officials manifestly sell their policy to Wake teachers — our busing ensures that you’ll never face a high-poverty classroom in a high-poverty school like those poor dopes in CMS. More evidence that CMS has some truly heroic teachers who do not get enough credit from the edu-establishment, starting with the EdShed.
