In a letter to the News & Observer, Hill comments,
Selective data reporting does not help us make informed decisions. Citing only data that supports one’s position isn’t of much value to anyone, but, unfortunately, can be very damaging to our children if used as the basis for our decisions.
Splendid! Now, I would urge Hill to support a rigorous study of the performance of all Wake County students forcibly bused over the last ten years.
To quote Mr. Spock from the best Star Trek film of them all, The Wrath of Khan, “Remember!”
“Diversity study shot down”
News & Observer
T. Keung Hui
12 December 2008RALEIGH — The Wake County school board has quashed a proposal to study whether its highly touted diversity policy is helping students academically.
School board members Ron Margiotta and Horace Tart asked this week whether administrators could track the performance of students who are assigned for diversity reasons. But other board members questioned the validity of the study as they insisted that the diversity policy is working.
“I’ve been at these [high poverty] schools,” said school board member Lori Millberg, whose children have attended schools in eastern Wake. “The stress on the teachers, the stress on the schools. I don’t need any further study to see if our diversity policy is working.”
Indeed, previous members of the school board did not even want to use data to inform their decisions. They used intuition. Surely, Mr. Hill and the pro-busing faction believe that data is more important than intuition.
