Meck Deck blogger Jeff Taylor and I have been critical of the “boutique school” movement from the start.
Now, comes this, courtesy of the News & Observer.
Four years ago, then-Gov. Mike Easley was billing East Wake High School as a leader of high school reform that would “provide high-level skills necessary to compete for health-related jobs in our rapidly changing economy,”
Now, Wake County school board members are looking at East Wake’s low test scores and asking whether the decision to divide the campus into four small schools was the right call. It’s a discussion that could result in a decision, as early as Tuesday, to discontinue the small schools program after a grant runs out in June 2010.
“It has not shown the advancement that I thought it would have over a four-year period of time,” school board member Patti Head said. “But you’ve seen the pleas of parents, students and teachers.”
As I mentioned in a previous LR post, the Gates Foundation is no longer supporting these initiatives because, “Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students’ achievement in any significant way.”
