Can someone please explain to me why the Obama Administration & Democrats in Congress are Eliminating D.C.'s Opportunity Scholarship Program?
The Program was established to assist Minority Students from Low Income homes to attend Private Schools as a Fast Track to College.
The Program has a Very Successful Track Record so why are Pres. Obama & Congressional Democrats Eliminating it?
And NO! This is NOT being done by the GOP!
Democrats were still in Control (Both Chambers) when the decisions to cut this very Effective Educational Program to help Low Income, Minority Students was made.
I'll wait for a Logical Explanation.
That is, if anyone still Cares about the Future of Low Income, Minority Students!
THE NONPROFIT that administers the District’s program of federally funded school vouchers held two open houses to solicit interest from low-income families for the upcoming school year. The response was overwhelming; nearly 1,200 new applications were received. Most applicants are likely to end up disappointed because of a misguided decision by the Obama administration to effectively deny new students access to the successful program.
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) met last week with Education Secretary Arne Duncan to urge him to lift what they see as an artificial cap on the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
The popular program, now in its eighth year, allows children from low-income families to attend private schools with federally funded vouchers of up to $12,000 annually.
The cap of 1,615 students is well below the number of students previously accommodated by the program (1,903 in 2007-2008, for example) and has meant that new students aren’t being admitted.
Not only does that close the door to better schools for students most in need, but it would also make it impossible for researchers to conduct the congressionally mandated evaluation of the program.
Patrick Wolf, an investigator for the Institute for Education Sciences who has done past studies of the program, told congressional staff that a credible study could not be done without the addition of several hundred new students.
The administration insists that a cap is necessary because it’s unclear whether the program will be funded next year; funds must be held in reserve to ensure the continuation of scholarships for currently enrolled students. It’s a rich argument, since any uncertainty about funding is entirely due to administration actions.
As Mr. Boehner wrote on a blog Tuesday, it was President Obama who “inexplicably” zeroed out funding for the program in his budget proposal, a decision in direct contradiction to a law he signed last year that authorized full funding for vouchers, along with monies for D.C. charter and traditional public schools. That legislation contains no cap on enrollment.
Mr. Boehner has made clear that Congress will provide the funds for this program, but because the group in charge of the program is now being forced to abide by the artificial cap, many students will unnecessarily be deprived of scholarships. In other words, when the money becomes available, it will be too late.
Now is the time that families are making decisions about schools for the fall. Unless Mr. Obama and Mr. Duncan are intent on denying hundreds of underprivileged D.C. students the chance for a quality education, they should work with Mr. Boehner to ensure the uninterrupted continuation of this important program.
Recent News Of The Atlanta Schools's Cheating Scandal Is Another Reason Why Both Congress & The Obama Administration Needs To Either Eliminate Or Completely Reform George W. Bush's Sorry "No Child Left Behind" Program.
Bush's "No Child Left Behind" Program Doesn't Really Help Students, Nor Teachers.
It Only Perpetuates Cheating On Tests By Forcing Students To Pass Tests For The Sole Purpose Of States To Receive Federal Dollars.
Its A Waste, Not Conducive To Students' Learning Environments & A Hinderance To Progress In The Public School Education System.
On The Other Hand, Republican Governors Like Sonny Perdue (Ga) Need To STOP Cutting Funding For Public Schools Located In Low Income School Districts.
Those Students Need To Experience Academic Success Just Like Students Who Reside In The Suburbs.
Repeal NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND Or Completely Reform It!
If This Program Is Not Really Conducive To Learning Why Continue To Use It?
Its A Failure! Repeal It Or Completely Reform It!
By The Way After Pres. Obama Is Re-elected, It Wouldn't Hurt For Him To Consider Hiring Dr. Michelle Rhee As His New Education Secretary.
The product of a two-year investigation, the report concluded that systematic cheating occurred within Atlanta Public Schools -- which had been lauded for its quick testing gains -- including at least 44 of the 56 examined schools. The report implicated 38 principals, noting that 178 educators pled the Fifth Amendment when questioned. Eighty-two other educators confessed to various forms of cheating, including erasing wrong answers on students' multiple choice exams and then replacing them with the correct ones.
"The 2009 CRCT [test] statistics are overwhelming and allow for no conclusion other than widespread cheating," a summary of the report circulated by the governor's office said.
The cheating can be traced back to as early as 2001, the report found. It detailed how warnings of cheating in late 2005 were ignored and how the school system destroyed documents and provided false statements to hide wrongdoing.
"In a statewide erasure analysis ... the Atlantic Public School system test results demonstrated a pattern of wrong to right changes, evidencing that these changes did not occur in a valid testing environment," Gov. Nathan Deal said at a Tuesday press conference.
"We share a common resolve to address these problems ... so this dark cloud will not continue to hang over the system, the city and the state," he continued.
Deal forwarded the report to several officials to determine whether its conclusions warrant the filing of criminal charges. The report also illuminated painful consequences for APS students: Because the cheating inflated their scores, causing thousands to miss out on remedial education.
Reports of cheating on standardized tests with the goal of bolstered performance have increased in frequency in recent years, according to Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing. Schaeffer, who has tracked such revelations, noted in the past only a few reports surfaced each year, but now several appear weekly.
"The number of confirmed reports of score manipulation has exploded," he said.
Whether the growth is because of better reporting or simply more cheating is unclear. Still, Schaeffer and others say the pressures placed on teachers by policies that stress standardized test scores -- such as No Child Left Behind -- foster an environment ripe for cheating.
"Cheating was caused by a number of factors but primarily by the pressure to meet targets in the data-driven environment," according to the report's summary. "A culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation existed in APS, which created a conspiracy of silence and deniability with respect to standardized test misconduct."
"School districts don’t have incentives for policing themselves. Their reputations depend on a steady rise in performance that accountability mandates of NCLB require," said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College.
And with about 15 states preparing to tie test scores to teacher evaluations after a nationwide legislative push toward test-based accountability, Schaeffer said, the pressure is only bound to increase. "We know that the more pressure it's brought to bear, the more people crack," Schaeffer said.
Still, the cheating exposed in Atlanta, he said, is more pervasive and widespread than any he'd seen before.
"The size and scope based on the number of names in the Georgia report appears to be significantly larger than anything before," he said.
THE ATLANTA STORY
Investigators spent more than two years looking into much-lauded gains on 2009's state standardized tests after questions about "statistically improbable" test score increases were first raised by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
An initial report was deemed superficial, with one high-ranking official saying her testimony had been edited to soften the blow.
Then-Governor Sonny Perdue ordered a new report, this time with the help of Georgia's equivalent of the FBI.
When Deal took office, he allowed the investigation to continue -- and received its results last week. In his Tuesday press conference, Deal told reporters that "there will be consequences" for those implicated by the report.
The report itself was not released to the media, though officials gave the Atlanta Journal Constitution an early look at the document.
According to the AJC, the investigators concluded that APS chief Beverly Hall -- who retired recently after serving the full length of her term despite the investigation -- "knew or should have known" about the cheating. Hall led Atlanta's troubled schools for 12 years, leading to her being named "Superintendent of the Year" in 2009.
"I was really disappointed," said Diane Ravitch, a New York University education historian and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education who has since become a critic of what she sees as the corporatization of education policy. "I had thought that Beverly Hall was one of our best superintendents, that she was the real deal."
The report criticizes a culture of cheating, fear and retaliation. According to the AJC, it also chronicles the lack of cooperation by officials in the investigation. It alleges that school administrators tampered with the investigation and tried to avoid taking blame for the mess.
AJC education blogger Maureen Downey spelled out what she saw as the motivations for the drawn-out cheating episode:
I think some of their motivation was less self-serving; they wanted to fulfill Dr. Hall’s vision that low-income children from single parent homes and tough neighborhoods could and would succeed at levels comparable to suburban Atlanta peers.
CHEATING ACROSS THE COUNTRY
Atlanta is not alone in allegedly gaming its numbers. Schaeffer said cheating headlines have popped up in the last month alone from Baltimore, Norfolk, Va., Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Florida.
In June, Andrés Alonso, CEO of Baltimore's schools, announced that evidence of cheating had been found at two elementary schools over the last two years. He accompanied the announcement with a promise that the 2011 standardized tests would be the most "extraordinarily transparent set of scores of any urban district in America."
Shortly afterwards, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan addressed cheating in a letter to state superintendents of education. Duncan wrote:
I am writing to urge you to do everything you can to ensure the integrity of the data used to measure student achievement and ensure meaningful educational accountability in your State. As I’m sure you know, even the hint of testing irregularities and misconduct in the test administration process could call into question school reform efforts and undermine the State accountability systems that you have painstakingly built over the past decade.
Representatives from Duncan's office said they would let the letter speak for itself in light of the Georgia incident.
While Congress struggles to overhaul No Child Left Behind, it might embed more provisions for monitoring tests. But Pallas said states might see this as yet another unfunded mandate.
Besides, Schaeffer said, more policing doesn’t always work.
"It's like trying to enforce marijuana laws," he said. "The more security personnel you add, the further underground cheating gets."
Standardized tests are easy to game, he added. "There are simply too many places in the process where people touch the test or have the opportunity to manipulate scores," he said.
"I've never seen so many cheating scandals as there have been in the last few years," Ravitch said. "As we get closer to this deadline of [100% proficiency under NCLB by] 2014, it's not surprising that there are schools and districts where these things happen again and again."
Twelve years ago, the school board declared war on the suburbs. That war would eventually break the county financially, destabilize the school system and launch middle-class flight.
Last Tuesday, the chickens finally came home to roost. At a school board meeting that at times threatened to turn violent, Minority parents accused school board members of Racism. The board closed or reconfigured a long list of schools with heavy minority and poor populations to save money. Understandably, outraged protestors believed this to be an assault on poor minorities, given that whiter, more suburban schools were left untouched.
They're right in their instinct that their children will pay the price for the fiasco school leaders created over the last decade, but not for the reasons they think.
Rewind to 1997, when white suburban parents sued to end busing for racial integration. The school system fought them bitterly in court, but lost. In retribution, the school board's majority and Superintendent Eric Smith decided to starve the then-booming suburbs of school-building dollars. The formula used to calculate where schools should be built was jiggered to show negative growth in the suburbs during a time when the county regularly ranked among America's top 10 fastest-growing places due largely to suburban growth.
Suburban schools were allowed to burst at the seams while the school system went on a billion-dollar building spree, throwing up schools in low-income areas where the bulk of the county's growing population didn't actually live. This was by design. The courts had blocked the school system from busing kids by race to achieve school diversity. They would use space to achieve it instead.
Eventually, school leaders believed, suburban schools would overflow and occupancy would violate fire codes. Suburban, mostly white children would be forced into the half-filled urban schools. Diversity could still be achieved through spite.
Waddell High School, the focus of much of the crowd's anger Tuesday night, was a classic spite school. In a contentious 5-4 vote, the school board decided to bypass desperately overcrowded suburban areas and locate Waddell just a few miles from struggling Olympic High School in a lower population west side area.
Waddell was state of the art, with science labs and a media center that most school districts would envy. Yet it opened half full in 2001 and struggled to attract students while bursting suburban schools were forced to hold classes in their gyms. Waddell was closed Tuesday as a high school and will be replaced with a magnet school.
Between 2001 and 2004, 17 new schools were built. Of those, just four were in booming suburban areas of the county. Dozens more urban schools were renovated from top to bottom. Some of this made sense. Because of the lawsuit, minority kids would be returning to neighborhood schools that were decrepit and needed to be renovated.
But the school board took its construction orgy to levels so outrageous that classes in new urban schools were half full with ratios of 15 kids to a teacher. The school board blew a billion dollars on school construction, doubling the county's debt load while the population only grew by 28 percent. By 2010, Wake County had 6,000 more students than Mecklenburg did, but 17 fewer schools.
In the process, the school board made a terrible miscalculation. It wrongly assumed that suburbanites would put their kids on buses to half-empty urban schools once suburban ones burst at the seams. Instead, parents began to bypass absurdly overcrowded schools here and moved to Union and York counties.
The board alienated an entire generation of suburban parents who could have diversified our schools, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with the busing lawsuit. While thousands of new children a year showed up to school in neighboring counties, our schools bled middle-income white kids. In 1998, our schools were 58-percent white. Today they are 33 percent; the schools built to hold them remain partially full.
Worse yet, the county is now struggling to operate its schools and libraries while paying down its enormous school construction debt. On Tuesday, the school board took the first step in cleaning up this mess, closing down and consolidating schools so that they can get back to the business of educating kids.
The U.S. Education Department is reviewing five civil-rights complaints alleging that Charlotte-Mecklenburg's school closings and other assignment changes discriminate against black and Hispanic students.
The department, which does not reveal who files complaints, expects to decide within a couple of weeks whether the complaints merit an investigation.
In a worst-case scenario, a finding that CMS violated federal civil rights laws could block federal money or lead to a Justice Department probe. However, the Education Department tries to negotiate a resolution without resorting to those steps, according to its Web site.
Education Department spokesman Jim Bradshaw said the first complaint was filed Oct. 29, before last week's vote to close 10 schools and change programs and/or assignments at about two dozen others. Four more were filed after the vote, he said Wednesday.
Most students affected by closings and major changes are black or Hispanic and from low-income homes, prompting some to accuse Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools of racism or class discrimination. Feelings ran high: About a dozen people protested outside Superintendent Peter Gorman's house the weekend before the vote, and board members Eric Davis and Kaye McGarry received death-threat letters afterward.
Gorman and Davis, the board's chair, have repeatedly said closings and school mergers were based on empty classrooms and/or academic weakness. They note that CMS spends millions providing extra teachers, supplies and other aid to high-poverty schools serving mostly minority students, and say sacrificing buildings could help protect such aid in the face of huge projected budget cuts.
"Most of the schools we closed are in the African American community. That's factually accurate," Davis said the day after the vote. "We didn't close them because they're in the African American community."
Parents at Waddell High, which will close next school year, held a news conference the day after the vote urging parents to file complaints with the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights.
"We all need to do this together," parent DeAndra Alex said. "We need to do this proactively, and we need to do this forcefully."
The Observer has filed a request for the complaints and any other related documents. The Office of Civil Rights deletes "personally identifiable information" from any information provided, Bradshaw said.
The President of Charlotte's NAACP chapter has called former mayor Pat McCrory "Racist" in a televised interview, after McCrory said comments by Kojo Nantambu might incite violence.
The two men's comments are the latest chapter in an ongoing dispute triggered by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' decision to cut costs by closing a number of schools, mostly in African American and Latino communities.
In recent days, two CMS board members reportedly received threatening letters, tied to their votes to close the schools.
During interviews with at least two Charlotte media outlets Monday, McCrory said Nantambu's protest chant during last week's school board meeting could lead to violence.
After the school board voted 5-4 to approve a cost-cutting plan that included the school closings, Nantambu began leading a chant, "No justice, no peace!"
McCrory told WBTV, "This should be a man of peace who's encouraging respectful dialogue, even during disagreements -- as opposed to a mean tone and very violent words."
Nantambu, also in a WBTV interview, countered that his chant was not intended to trigger violence. "In a society or community anywhere, if there is not justice, there's not going to be peace," he said. "But it doesn't mean there's going to be violence."
Then Nantambu criticized McCrory, saying, "That's the way he perceives it. That's because he has a very distorted view of reality in himself. And because he's a racist himself."
When asked by WBTV reporter Brigida Mack if he were calling McCrory racist, Nantambu responded, "Yeah, he's a racist."
McCrory later said Nantambu "sbould be ashamed of saying that."
Nantambu said during the weekend that the NAACP had no involvement in the threatening letters received by board chairman Eric Davis and board member Kaye McGarry.
Emotions bubbled to the surface during last week's CMS school board vote, prompting someone to put their feelings down on paper.
"In the letter it's clear and obvious they are being targeted because of the way they voted on the school issue," said Milton Harris with CMPD's Criminal Intelligence Unit.
On Friday, board member Kaye McGarry received a threatening letter. On Saturday CMS board chairman Eric Davis received one as well.
"Basically the contents of the letter would give the average person concern for their personal safety," said Harris.
Both Davis and McGarry were outspoken proponents of closing E.E. Waddell High.
"I feel that as chairman, Davis said we need to make a decision tonight," Kaye McGarry said last Tuesday night at that controversial meeting.
NewsChannel 36 contacted McGarry on the phone Monday, but she would not talk about the threat.
She did say whoever wrote it referenced Waddell in the letter.
"We have it in the lab. We're looking at the forensics. Any forensics that may apply to documents we're applying that to these documents," said Harris.
Police are taking the situation seriously given that whoever made the threat took the time to learn where the board members live.
"We don’t know who wrote the letters. We don’t know their mental status," said Harris.
Davis contacted NewsChannel 36 late Monday afternoon. He, too, declined to discuss the threat.
When asked if he was worried about it he said, "No."
Police think the same person wrote both letters, and they are confident they will learn who that person is and why they made the threats.
Hundreds of students at E.E. Waddell High School held hands and stood outside the school Wednesday morning, refusing to go inside as a silent protest to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' decision to close the school.
In a Tuesday night meeting marked by split votes, angry protests and accusations of racism, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board approved a sweeping plan to close 10 schools and make other dramatic changes.
In the most controversial item, the board voted 5-4 to close Waddell High and make it the new home for Smith Language Academy, a K-8 magnet. Harding High, which had also been considered as a home for Smith, will turn into a neighborhood school housing many of Waddell's students, along with the International Baccalaureate magnet now at Harding.
Most other efforts to block or revise the plan failed, often with the board's only two black members on the losing end of votes.
"That's a racist vote," speaker John White told the board after the seven white members rejected a move by Joyce Waddell and Richard McElrath to delay a vote on all proposed changes.
Race was a common theme as more than 100 people made one last attempt to sway the board on its historic decision.
The votes change life for about 25,000 students next year. It is the first time the district, which has long grappled with the challenges of growth, has faced massive closings and reassignments because of a shrinking budget.
Most speakers were critical of the plans crafted by Superintendent Peter Gorman and hashed out after five months of board meetings and public forums. Many noted that closings and other major changes would land disproportionately on schools serving minority and low-income students.
Only about 5 percent of students in the schools slated to close are white, compared with a third district-wide.
"Everyone should share the pain, including our suburban families and communities," said Adrian DeVore.
"You are about to wake a sleeping giant called the civil rights movement," said Darrell Bonapart.
Gorman, board Chair Eric Davis and other members say the changes are based on low enrollment and/or academic weakness, not on race or clout. And they say it's just the start of a quest to cut up to $100 million from next year's $1 billion budget.
Before public comments began, Waddell and McElrath argued for pulling the vote off the agenda. Waddell said by waiting until February, officials could craft a fairer plan.
Other members said they needed to vote now to be ready for the 2011 magnet lottery.
After the motion was voted down, a handful of activists began chanting "No justice, no peace." CMS and Charlotte-Mecklenburg police led them from the meeting chamber.
A gray-haired woman collapsed into the space between rows of seats. The board watched quietly as officers worked to get her to her feet.
"You knocked her down?" someone called.
"No," others said.
Another woman, whom police later identified as Niksa Karina Balbosa, 39, was led away in handcuffs. "They are voting to destroy our children," she shouted. "We won't stop until we're heard."
She was charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing, CMS Police Chief Bud Cesena said.
Charlotte NAACP President Kojo Nantambu arrived 15 minutes after the meeting began and tried to get into the meeting chamber, but was turned away. He led a group of roughly 30 people, some with signs, who began chanting in the lobby, calling on the school board to push back the vote.
Even after the board voted to keep the closings plan on the agenda, many speakers urged members to start over. Sarah Stevenson, a former school board member, was among them.
"You have a golden opportunity to be fair and equitable to minority children and minority communities," Stevenson said. "You'd be the first board of education to do that in the 60-something years that I've been active in politics in this community."
The local League of Women Voters also called for a do-over, saying the current plan creates too much disruption and distrust for a relatively small savings.
"This is not the time to be penny wise and pound foolish," said co-president Janet Brinkley.
But some speakers from Smith Language Academy, which now moves to Waddell, urged members to vote.
"It's not fair to the students and the parents to delay the process any further," one said.
Joyce Waddell also made a motion to scrap a plan to close three high-poverty, mostly minority middle schools and move the students into new pre-K-8 schools. She said Gorman hasn't shown that students will benefit from the move. Her motion lost on a 5-4 vote.
Five and a half hours into the meetings, feelings were running high. Audience members shouted at board member Joe White as he spoke from the dais. He snapped back that he hadn't interrupted them when they spoke.
"No wonder we have kids who don't know how to behave," White said. He quickly added that some of the best and most civil speakers earlier in the meeting were students.
On the eve of the controversial vote on closing and consolidating Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, CMS board members Joyce Waddell and Richard McElrath made small contributions to the NAACP's legal research fund.
Both McElrath and Waddell put cash in a bucket passed around at the end of an NAACP meeting Monday night.
Chapter president Rev. Kojo Nantambu called the meeting to encourage the African-American community to come out to fight the school district's cost-cutting proposal. Nantambu asked members to put money into buckets he called "a legal defense fund."
Asked later about the purpose of the funds, he said they are for "legal research," including both looking for more equitable solutions to the cash crunch and exploring the possibility of legal action against CMS.
Waddell has said she has concerns about the impact on poor and minority students, reiterating Monday night, "Look at it, and you can see for yourself. Minority students are the ones taking the largest burden of what's out there."
When asked about the donation, "I do not support suing CMS," Waddell said. "That money is for research."
McElrath did not return several phones calls about the donation.
A CMS spokesperson could not comment late Monday on ethics rules regarding donations and conflicts of interest. She promised more information Tuesday.
Tuesday night the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board voted to shut down 10 schools, expand other schools, and change boundaries.
In the most controversial vote of the night, the board voted 5-4 to shut down Waddell High school and give its building to Smith Language Academy.
That vote also means that Harding High will lose its math and science magnet program to Phillip O. Berry High, and Harding will become a partial neighborhood school instead of a full magnet school. Harding will keep its IB program.
Both Harding and Waddell parents expressed disappointment after the vote.
The four members who voted not to shut down Waddell and make the change to Harding were Tom Tate, Joyce Waddell, Richard McElrath, and Trent Merchant. Board chair Eric Davis, Joe White, Kaye McGarry, Rhonda Lennon, and Tim Morgan voted yes.
The school board also voted to make a host of other changes which are listed at the bottom of this article.
Not long after it began, the Charlotte Mecklenburg School Board meeting was disrupted Tuesday night when a group of people started chanting from inside the board chambers.
Several folks began chanting, "No justice, no peace," and were led out of the room by police officers from Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.
At least two people were arrested during the meeting, including CMS parent Niksa Balbosa. She shouted, "There is a bigger plan than public knows! Fight for your children! Fight!" as she was being taken, in handcuffs, into the elevator at the Board of Education.
Police tell us that Balbosa will be charged with disorderly conduct and she was being taken to the Mecklenburg County jail. NAACP members told WBTV's Dedrick Russell that they were planning to bail Balbosa out.
The meeting interrupting lasted for several minutes. When police escorted some of the chanters outside, the chants continued in the hall.
In the lobby, NAACP President Kojo Nantambu lead a group of protests in chanting, "Push Back the Date!" referring to their demand that the board not vote on a host of controversial measures Tuesday night.
A woman fell during the chanting and an ambulance was called to check out her injuries which appeared to be minor. Its not clear how she fell.
There are 25 measures the board is scheduled to consider, which include school closures and other big changes. A crowd of close to 500 showed up, including many who had to watch in the government center lobby and two overflow rooms.
Before the disruption, board member Joyce Waddell had tried to get the board to delay voting on all the measures.
"I am asking that this be delayed until the February meeting," Waddell said.
But Waddell's motion was shot down 7-2, with only board member Richard McElrath joining Waddell.
Here are the changes the board voted to make:
These are the schools that, except for one, will be closed by next school year:
* Irwin Avenue Elementary (students would be sent to Dilworth or Ashley Park elementaries; IB Primary Years magnet program at Irwin goes away; the board originally planned to turn Irwin into CMS offices, but instead decided Tuesday night that the Villa Heights Learning Immersion/Talent Development program would move into the Irwin facility) * Lincoln Heights Elementary (Lincoln Heights students will go to Bruns Avenue Elementary) * Oakhurst Elementary (students will be sent to either Rama Road or Billingsville elementaries; Paideia magnet program at Oakhurst will close) * Pawtuckett Elementary School (Pawtuckett students will go to Whitewater Academy) * Davidson IB Middle (the IB program will be relocated to Alexander Middle) * John Taylor Williams Middle * Bishop Spaugh Community Academy (Middle School) * Wilson Middle School * Waddell High School (Smith Language Academy will move into Waddell's building and take the Waddell name) * Amay James Pre-Kindergarten (closing a pre-K does not require a board vote, so this closure was not voted on Tuesday night) * University Park Elementary (it will not shut down until the 2012-2013 school year; at that time its creative arts magnet will be combined with First Ward Elementary's creative arts magnet)
Here are some other changes the CMS board approved Tuesday night that will start next school year:
BOUNDARY CHANGES:
* Community House Middle students who live north of 485 will now go to South Charlotte Middle * Some Garinger High students will go to Cochrane Middle, which will eventually become a 6-12th grade school by 2014; Cochrane will not have sports but students will be allowed to play for Garinger * Some Nathaniel Alexander and Hornets Nest elementary students will now go to Winding Springs Elementary, which without its magnet will now become a neighborhood school * Students at Tuckaseegee Elementary School will go on to Whitewater Middle School * Students at Barringer Elementary will go on to Sedgefield Middle School * Students living in the Dilworth and Eastover elementary zones who formerly went to Bishop Spaugh Middle will now go to Alexander Graham Middle
NEW MAGNETS:
# Create a learning immersion/talent development partial magnet at Mallard Creek Elementary # Create a Primary Years International Baccalaureate (PYIB) partial magnet program at Blythe Elementary School
MAGNET THAT WILL MOVE:
# Harding High's math and science magnet program will move to Phillip O. Berry High; Harding will keep its IB program and no longer be a full magnet school -- some kids will be assigned to it as a neighborhood school
The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights is investigating whether Black Male Students are punished disproportionately in the Christina School District in Wilmington and Newark, one of five districts nationwide under scrutiny for its discipline record.
Federal investigators are in the process of visiting all of Christina's schools and have requested detailed discipline data for at least the last two academic years.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan first mentioned districts were being investigated at a conference in late September hosted by the Department of Education's Civil Rights office and the Department of Justice's Civil Rights division.
One of the other districts, the San Juan School District in rural Utah, is being investigated for alleged gender disparities without respect to race or ethnicity, according to a school official.
Christina district officials acknowledged that a Disparity exists in the discipline rates for Black Male students that they are working to correct, according to district spokeswoman Wendy Lapham. She added that the district has been cooperating with the federal investigation.
Statewide, Black students made up about 32% of the public school population last year, but they accounted for about 55% of students who were suspended or expelled, according to an analysis by The News Journal published in June that compared discipline statistics provided by the state to school enrollments.
The discipline rates for all students in Delaware are higher than the national average: 21,690 of the state's 126,801 students — about one in six — were suspended or expelled in the 2009-2010 school year, which is down slightly from the year before. Those numbers include in-school suspensions. Counting only expulsions and out-of-school suspensions, the number dips to 14,368 students, or about one in nine.
The Christina School District had the highest rate among the state's 19 school districts in the 2008-2009 and the 2007-2008 school years. However, the district's numbers went down in almost every school in 2009-2010.
Lapham said the decrease is the result of an effort to better train teachers, help students learn to deal with conflicts and the elimination of a zero-tolerance policy.
She said the district has been analyzing its data internally and has been "working to address any issues of Disparity by working with teachers at the classroom level, increasing training for para-professionals, reviewing and discussing data at the school level and significantly reducing suspensions and expulsions."
In 2009, a 6-year-old boy brought a Boy Scout tool to a Christina school to eat his pudding at lunch. Under the district's zero-tolerance policy, the boy faced a punishment of suspension or expulsion. The policy did not allow educators to make a punishment judgment call based on the context of the incident or age of the child.
But after public outcry and widespread media attention, the school board decided to amend its policy as it pertained to kindergarten and first-grade students.
Parents and officials point to that outcome when they complained about Christina's high rate of punishment among black males. The 6-year-old was white.
Wanda Stanley said she read about the boy's case with interest because her 11-year-old daughter was expelled after a box cutter fell out of her jacket pocket at Pulaski Elementary School in Wilmington. The girl did not know how the box cutter got in her pocket and had no intention of hurting anyone, her mother said. Police were notified by the school but did not file charges.
School officials told her there was no room for debate about the expulsion because of the district's zero-tolerance policy, Stanley said. From her perspective, Stanley saw that a white boy went unpunished while her Black Daughter was put out of school.
"I am hurt because I know my daughter is totally innocent and I don't want this to follow my daughter through her schooling," Stanley said.
The district and state boards of education ruled that the expulsion was justified. The district's board amended the zero-tolerance policy further last school year.
A complaint against the school board is pending before the state Human Relations Commission, alleging that the district discriminated against Stanley's daughter on the basis of age and race.
Studies show that Minorities are punished at higher rates than their peers, but there's not evidence that these children misbehave more, said Dan Losen, a former teacher who now works for the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The government under President George W. Bush did not investigate many schools for these issues, which are now getting attention under the Obama administration, he said.
Typically, reviews from the Office of Civil Rights are used to help districts find solutions and to monitor progress, Losen said, because "the preference has historically been to enter into a joint problem-solving approach rather than issuing violations."
Helen Spacht, principal at Christina's Wilson Elementary, said programs like the district's Day of Caring help reinforce the importance of kindness and how to treat others with respect. The school is certified under the Anti-Defamation League's No Place for Hate program, which means staff and students have undergone training on diversity issues. Also, teachers have been meeting to share ideas and literature on better classroom and bullying management, she said.
"It's really changing the strategies and how they work with students," she said.
But the district has not made enough progress in dealing with these issues, said New Castle Councilman Jea Street, who organized a rally in April to protest the discipline rates.
"The fact is that (the office of civil rights) is once again going to have to do what local officials refuse to do," Street said. "Nobody would listen to me when I claimed Christina was discriminating when it changed policy to accommodate one child and knew full well that the same policy had been used overzealously for others."
North Carolina’s Constitution guarantees children an opportunity for a basic education, but doesn’t require alternative schooling for students suspended for misbehavior, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.
While local school boards are required by state law to establish at least one alternative learning program for students serving long-term suspensions, school administrators are not required to accommodate every suspended student, the court ruled.
“Because the safety and educational interests of all students receiving alternative education must be protected, students who exhibit violent behavior, threaten staff or other students, substantially disrupt the learning process, or otherwise engage in serious misconduct may be denied access,” Justice Mark Martin wrote for the court.
The case started with a fistfight outside a rural high school in January 2008 and attracted the attention of groups ranging from Civil Rights Advocates to school administrators to education groups from Alabama to Chicago.
Viktoria King and Jessica Hardy were sophomore students at Southside High School in Chocowinity when a melee led to sheriff’s deputies handcuffing and briefly arresting a dozen students.
The two girls were suspended from school for the rest of the semester and told they could not attend Beaufort County’s alternative school for troubled students.
Attorneys for the girls argued that violated the state constitution’s right to a public education. North Carolina’s top court ruled in a school funding case in 1997 that the Constitution gives each child a right to a “sound basic education.”
But that doesn’t mean protecting students from the consequences of their own misconduct, Martin wrote.
“A critical distinction exists between the state uniformly denying students in low-income districts access to a sound basic education and the state offering all students a sound basic education but temporarily removing students who engage in misconduct that disrupts the sound basic education of their peers,” Martin wrote.
The court did rule school administrators must explain why they denied a suspended student any alternatives, sending the case back to lower courts for further action.
King’s mother eventually paid for a home tutor during her semester-long suspension, while Hardy received no schooling until later entering the local alternative school, The Star-News of Wilmington reported in March.
North Carolina's application for Race to the Top money ranked 12th among the 16 finalists, according to reviewers' scores.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a conference call with reporters that the winners, Delaware and Tennessee, distanced themselves from the field. A factor that set those two apart from the rest was the statewide impact of their proposals.
"This is about systematic reform," Duncan said. "These two states are touching every child."
All states' scores will be made public on the department's Web site. The department will also post video of the finalists' presentations.
"Everyone will see their own strengths and weakness and how they can improve," Duncan said.
Charter school advocates pinned the state's failure on the law that caps charter schools at 100.
Duncan said charters were part of the equation, but were not a dispropotionate factor the 500-point scoring scheme.
Tennesssee caps charter schools at 90. The state voted last year to raise the limit.
Gov. Bev Perdue weighed in on the Wake County diversity debate – sort of.
Asked this week about the Wake County Board of Education's decision to end busing for socioeconomic reasons in favor of neighborhood schools, Perdue seemed to favor the old system, reports Rob Christensen.
"I am speaking as a mother and a grandmother," Perdue said after a news conference at Rex Hospital to announce a Medicaid anti-fraud effort.
"I really do believe that kids do better in a situation that prepares them for real life," Perdue said. "And real life has children who are from all economic levels."
Perdue said students should learn to live with people of other backgrounds.
"I hate busing. I know that is hard for people," Perdue said. "The bottom line for me as governor....is to be sure that every kid in every neighborhood in North Carolina, regardless of where they live, is actually able to go to a school that works and can help them be career or college-ready."
The governor doesn't have any direct influence over local assignment policies.
The new Wake County school board majority's plan to abandon the use of socioeconomic diversity will be fought every step of the way by groups that vow to block efforts to implement neighborhood schools.
Supporters of Wake's diversity policy say they're not deterred by the board's 5-4 vote Tuesday to end decades of busing for racial and income diversity in favor of sending children to schools in their communities. The leaders of the largest opposition groups say they plan to scrutinize every step that the board will take over the next nine to 15 months to develop the new system, from lobbying the public to potentially taking legal action.
"We will work to fight their efforts to end socio-economic diversity," said the Rev. William Barber, President of the NC NAACP, on Wednesday. "We will use every legal and moral tool at our disposal."
The calls of defiance were countered with calls for community unity from supporters of the board majority. They urged supporters of the diversity policy to work with the board in developing the details of the new assignment model, which would divide Wake into community school zones.
"The time for fighting is over," said Kristen Stocking, a founder of Wake Schools Community Alliance, a parent group that raised money during the fall campaign to elect four Republican-backed board members.
"The process will move forward over the next few years whether they like it or not. This is the will of the voters."
In addition to intense scrutiny from opponents, the board's majority will deal with challenges such as how the new community-schools system will be implemented during a time of tight budgets and the expectation of renewed student growth. The board also will have the challenge of deciding where to set the boundaries for each zone and what to do with magnet schools.
Since the mid-1970s, racial or socioeconomic status has been a key factor in school assignments for students, who now number about 140,000. The use of socioeconomic diversity for the past decade has won Wake national recognition.
Supporters of the diversity policy had argued that the policy helped the district avoid assigning high proportions of students from low-income families to district schools, which can lead to lower test scores and high teacher turnover; those factors can discourage businesses from moving into the area. Critics argued that the policy allowed the district to hide the poor academic performance and graduation rates of students from low-income families.
As the Tuesday vote neared, the lobbying efforts of supporters of the diversity policy increased, with a candlelight vigil Monday and predictions of re-segregation Tuesday. The board's actions were booed by some in the crowd, with a few protesters creating such a disruption with their chanting that they were arrested.
Supporters of the board said Wednesday that histrionics need to end and that talk about re-segregation is overblown.
"Lay down your candles and your songs and give them breathing room," Patrice Lee, a founder of Wake CARES, a parent group that backs the board majority, said Wednesday at a news conference.
Kathleen Brennan, another Wake CARES co-founder, said "the time for threats, name-calling and dire consequences is over."
But Barber said the NAACP won't give up no matter how long it takes to restore the diversity policy. He noted that it took 58 years for the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse its earlier decision that separate but equal was legal.
Yevonne Brannon, chairwoman of the Great Schools in Wake Coalition, which backs the diversity policy, pledged Wednesday to put the new board's plans under the microscope. She predicted that public backlash, which the group will try to heighten, and budget woes will derail the majority's efforts.
"I have faith in the community," Brannon said. "Their core values are stronger than the core values of the five. The community will not let the board vote stand."
But there was at least some talk of conciliation from groups that back the diversity policy. The Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association, a leading local civil rights group, passed a resolution last week in support of maintaining economic diversity. But Dan Coleman, the group's president, said the board's vote "hopefully presents all of us an opportunity to strengthen all of our families and communities as we move forward together."
"The RWCA stands ready willing and able to work with our Board of Education in crafting a new assignment policy that causes all communities to be high functioning and engaged communities," Coleman said.
During a tense marathon meeting, the Wake County school board voted to stop busing students for diversity, then cemented that action by taking the first steps toward a community-based system of student assignment.
With a 5-4 vote Tuesday, the Republican-backed board's majority ended more than three decades of having racial or socioeconomic status be a prime factor in school assignments for students, who now number around 140,000.
Instead, they agreed to start assigning students closer to home, even if the change creates more schools with high concentrations of students from poor families. Board member John Tedesco, point man for the resolution, said the system already allows for high numbers of high-poverty schools.
"This gives us our direction now," said Tedesco, who will chair the committee that will split the county into community school zones, a blueprint that will take up to 15 months to develop. "We're now going to community schools. This will give parents more stability."
While the plan for the new community zones is months from completion, the school board majority quickly solidified its vote by making student reassignment decisions showing they're no longer considering diversity.
The board approved measures in the reassignment plan for this fall that would send hundreds of students to schools closer to their homes. In the process, some diversity-related moves made by the old board were reversed.
After nine long hours
The diversity decision came nearly nine hours into a tumultuous day. Chairman Ron Margiotta and his four allies beat back amendments by opponents on the board who didn't want to pass the resolution without more study, more research and more information on its cost.
"If this is going to stand the test of time, it could stand the test of a work session," said opposition member Kevin Hill.
The majority agreed to an amendment by Dr. Anne McLaurin, another opposition member, that inserted language from the state constitution that guarantees all North Carolina children "an equal opportunity for a sound basic education."
Then, member Carolyn Morrison put the majority in the position of having to vote on "a plan that ensures that schools will not become segregated." Ultimately, the majority didn't support Morrison's amendment.
"The eyes of the nation are upon us," Morrison said.
Tedesco sharply disagreed with the charge that ending the diversity policy will lead to re-segregation. "That doesn't happen today. The fact is, the laws of the state of North Carolina and the Federal Government are sufficient to make sure that does not occur."
During a public comment period, police removed more than 20 people, mostly in their teens and early 20s, who sat in the hallway outside the meeting room and pierced the proceedings with loud chanting: "No Re-Segregation in our town! Shut it down!"
During a public comment period before the full board, about 75 percent of the speakers voiced opposition to the resolution that would lead to fundamental change in the way students are assigned.
Civil rights lawyer Julius Chambers, former director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, joined those who urged the board not to abandon its commitment to diversity.
"We are now re-opening a lot of issues and a lot of problems," said Chambers. "I hope you pause a moment and think about the problems you might be creating for the children and the parents you serve."
No Coercion, she says
Wake County parent Debbie Griffith Overby said she loves Wake's diversity, but doesn't believe in making students attend schools for that reason.
"I'm against forced busing," Overby said. "This is the United States of America. People should not be forced in Wake County to do anything they don't want to do."
Before the resolution passed, administrators in the morning work session said that they had already eliminated the use of socio-economic diversity in filling nearly all the magnet schools this year. In the absence of diversity, priority was given to applicants who had siblings in magnet schools or who were applying from crowded schools.
Previously, priority was also given to applicants from more affluent areas who could help create balance at schools in poor areas.
Only at the Wake Early College of Health and Science, where the goal is to attract prospective first-time college applicants, will diversity be used to pick applicants.
Administrators say 4,589 of the 7,670 magnet applicants, or 60 percent, were placed. Traditionally half or less are accepted.
Keeping cash flowing
Administrators warned that the board will need to act within a month to adopt a voluntary de-segregation plan to keep receiving Federal magnet grants. The diversity policy had been used for previous applications.
The new plan could come in the form of a resolution pledging to keep schools De-Segregated.
The national NAACP is now joining the call for Wake County school board chairman Ron Margiotta to resign following his "here come the animals out of the cages" comment at last week's board meeting.
In a press release today, national NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said he's joining the state NAACP in calling for Margiotta's resignation as board chairman. He said Margiotta's comment was 'racially insensitive."
“The racial insensitivity exhibited by Mr. Margiotta underscores the lack of consideration for the interests, needs, and concerns of Blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities in North Carolina,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous in the press releae. “We support the North Carolina NAACP in their call for justice and sensitivity in Wake County, and believe the resignation of Mr. Margiotta is a necessary step in that direction.”
Last week, the Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP, had said Margiotta was "unfit" to be chairman. Barber used the remark as part of the complaint filed last week with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Margiotta has said he was "out of line" for the remark. But he's denied it had racial intent. He's pointing out that he was upset that a mostly white crowd was booing a black speaker for criticizing the diversity policy.
Here's the press release:
NAACP PRESIDENT BENJAMIN TODD JEALOUS, NC NAACP CALL FOR RESIGNATION OF BOARD CHAIRMAN IN LIGHT OF RACIST COMMENTS WAKE COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD CHAIRMAN RON MARGIOTTA REFERRED TO PEOPLE OF COLOR AS "ANIMALS OUT OF THEIR CAGES"
NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous joined the North Carolina NAACP State Conference in calling for the resignation of Wake County School Board Chairman Ron Margiotta based on comments made by Margiotta the organization deems racially insensitive. In a recent public school board meeting, Margiotta referred to several stakeholders of color as “animals out of their cages.”
“The racial insensitivity exhibited by Mr. Margiotta underscores the lack of consideration for the interests, needs, and concerns of Blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities in North Carolina,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP. “We support the North Carolina NAACP in their call for justice and sensitivity in Wake County, and believe the resignation of Mr. Margiotta is a necessary step in that direction.”
Margiotta’s comments come in the midst of a contentious and racially charged battle over proposed changes to Wake County school district busing policy that will effectively re-segregate the county’s school system. While the battle for good jobs, good schools and economic solutions continue statewide, North Carolina NAACP State Conference President Rev. Dr. William Barber II asserts that attitudes like that of Margiotta will only increase the divide between people of all races who are affected by the surrounding social conditions.
“The vivid imagery evoked by Mr. Margiotta of uncaged wild animals takes another step toward dehumanizing African Americans while trivializing our concerns,” said Barber. “The racial undertones present in Mr. Margiotta’s comments stand to undermine cohesiveness between racial groups at a time when it is most needed as we work together to achieve a better North Carolina for all.”
Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.
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