Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Last Call

The Tea Party wins in Wake County, North Carolina...and the entire country loses as a result.

The sprawling Wake County School District has long been a rarity. Some of its best, most diverse schools are in the poorest sections of this capital city. And its suburban schools, rather than being exclusive enclaves, include children whose parents cannot afford a house in the neighborhood.


But over the past year, a new majority-Republican school board backed by national tea party conservatives has set the district on a strikingly different course. Pledging to "say no to the social engineers!" it has abolished the policy behind one of the nation's most celebrated integration efforts.

And as the board moves toward a system in which students attend neighborhood schools, some members are embracing the provocative idea that concentrating poor children, who are usually minorities, in a few schools could have merits - logic that critics are blasting as a 21st-century case for segregation.

The situation unfolding here in some ways represents a first foray of tea party conservatives into the business of shaping a public school system, and it has made Wake County the center of a fierce debate over the principle first enshrined in the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education: that diversity and quality education go hand in hand.

The new school board has won applause from parents who blame the old policy - which sought to avoid high-poverty, racially isolated schools - for an array of problems in the district and who say that promoting diversity is no longer a proper or necessary goal for public schools

Stop and think about that.

Wake County, home of the capital of the state I grew up in a Southern state no less, is telling children and parents that diversity is no longer a proper or necessary goal for public schools.

Before the Tea Party took control of the GOP, Wake County was a held up as a model school district.  It dropped racial integration for economic integration ten years ago and since then is one of the better ranked large school districts in not just the state, but the entire country.

Over the years, both Republican and Democratic school boards supported the system. A study of 2007 graduation rates by EdWeek magazine ranked Wake County 17th among the nation's 50 largest districts, with a rate of 64 percent, just below Virginia's Prince William County. While most students posted gains in state reading and math tests last year - more than three-quarters passed - the stubborn achievement gap that separates minority students from their white peers has persisted, though it has narrowed by some measures. And many parents see benefits beyond test scores.

To recap, Wake County schools improved significantly with the plan, and both Republicans and Democrats praised it.

That was before the Tea Party decided they wanted to take the schools backwards.

Things have not gone smoothly as the new school board has attempted to define its vision for raising student achievement. A preliminary map of new school assignments did not please some of the new majority's own constituents. And critics expressed alarm that the plan would create a handful of high-poverty, racially isolated schools, a scenario that the new majority has begun embracing.

Pope, who is a former state legislator, said he would back extra funding for such schools.

"If we end up with a concentration of students underperforming academically, it may be easier to reach out to them," he said. "Hypothetically, we should consider that as well." 

Under the old plan, the entire district performed better.  Test scores and graduation rates were higher.   A diverse, rising tide lifted all boats.

Now we're back to "We don't want them in our school."  Unbelievable.  You poor, minority kids can have your own school.  Hell, we'll pay you to stay out of ours.

Is this 2011 or 1951?  Way to set a national example of what you would do with power, Teabaggers.

11 comments:

Lowkey said...

Good golly, Z,

I hang up the intertrons for a few days, and come back, and you've developed a hardcore Trike Force rash!

Well, I'm certain this post should salve their butthurt.

LOL, righteous, Z. How's it all taste?

bughunter said...

According to the new Tea Party leadership, promoting diversity is no longer a proper or necessary goal for public schools.

But don't call them racists.

StarStorm said...

They just don't want those people in good, god-fearing schools.

I suppose I should be happy they just didn't shut the schools down, but really...

SteveAR said...

First off, the liberal concept of "diversity" is a scam that celebrates superficiality over substance. Private companies, and I work for one, spend billions of dollars that end up getting shoved uselessly into HR departments instead of improving product lines or employee paychecks. It's no different at the public level.

Second, this post by Zandar absolutely avoids any reference to other parts of the article noting very real concerns of all kinds of parents who have kids in Wake County schools who support the new plan. These parents make up the majority of Wake County since they were the ones who elected the new board.

Third, if the old plan was really that good, how can liberals say that after seeing this statement:

While most students posted gains in state reading and math tests last year - more than three-quarters passed - the stubborn achievement gap that separates minority students from their white peers has persisted, though it has narrowed by some measures.

So it doesn't appear that things are going as swimmingly as thought. So the majority of parents who now live in Wake County and have children in those schools now, took action. It sounds like they needed a change from the liberal "diversity" scam.

Liberals don't like to have their policies questioned. My response, too bad. You all aren't infallible. You can't always get what you want (sounds like a great phrase for a song, right?).

But instead of making constructive criticism in the post, we get name-calling, and cries of RAAAAAACISSSSSSSSSSMMMMMMMM!!!! not based on the facts. These same liberals demand conservatives be civil while not being civil themselves. You liberals want a civil discourse, you want to start a debate, great. This isn't how it's done.

Zandar said...

Actually, Wake County went from race to economics as the integration issue some ten years ago and the schools improved. As little as 4 years ago, Republicans were holding the district up as a model.

Now they're literally going backwards to a worse-performing model.

Nobody's saying you can't question the current model, it too has problems. But going back to a model that was worse in performance makes no sense whatsoever.

Explain that to me.

innocent bystander said...

"Private companies, and I work for one..."

i thought you owned your own business.

SteveAR said...

i thought you owned your own business.

I do have a business and a job. My wife handles most of the stuff with the business.

SteveAR said...

Zandar, you can't dismiss the concerns of the parents who deal with that school system now. It doesn't matter how Republicans saw it four years ago or how EdWeek sees things with data that states information from three years ago.

There are mentions of kids having to change schools often, which is extremely disruptive. Exceptional minority children aren't being placed in advanced classes because of quotas; economics quotas as opposed to racial quotas, but quotas nonetheless (this is how "diversity" dumbs down kids that shouldn't be dumbed down). Too many of the schools have higher percentages of poor children in them than what they are supposed to have, which is supposed to be avoided by the old program. And so on and so forth.

There is no talk of returning to what was done in the past, ie., racial segregation. But these are parents who have their kids in these schools now, and are concerned not only for the education of their own children, but of all the children of Wake County. They saw something in the old system that wasn't working. Since they live there, I would say they probably know better.

Zandar's Credibility Problem said...

And for somebody constantly pissing and moaning about "rhetoric undermining the power of elected officials" you certainly seem to have a problem with a duly elected local school board setting a local school policy.

If the new board's plan fails to improve the situation, I would expect the school board members would be replaced.

You have zero right to complain or criticize unless you have children in Wake County schools.

Unknown said...

"You have zero right to complain or criticize unless you have children in Wake County schools."

Which Amendment to the Constitution codifies this restriction to free speech?

Why are you still here, where you have been unmasked as a liar and a fraud, and unfit to partake in social interactions with decent people?

You should be home, nuzzling the barrel of daddy's pistol, suckling it and summoning the courage to end the pain with a bang, while whimpering to yourself that it's not fair that you never even got to see a grown lady naked who wasn't your mother.

That Other Mike said...

Unsuccessful troll is unsuccessful.

Related Posts with Thumbnails