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The recent school board elections in Wake County drew interest far beyond the county lines. National education scholars were watching as well as the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.
But Wake County parents and students and teachers will be watching the closet of all. As they should.
Wake County schools, contrary to the local, public perception in 2009, were among the best in the country. But the schools in recent years had seen little progress in achievement among its minority students. That was not the great concern among school board critics in 2009.
They were angry at small things such as employees stealing money and site selection of a high school. The issue that drove voters to the polls was about neighborhood schools, which, in the South, meant mostly white schools for mostly white neighborhoods and black schools for black neighborhoods.
Specifically, suburban voters wanted the system to abandon its brave effort to keep schools racially and economically integrated.
That is why there was so much interest, statewide and nationally, in the direction of the Wake schools this year. The board majority elected in 2009 wanted to send children to their nearest schools. This policy as practiced elsewhere leads to more and more schools populated by poor and poor performing students, most of whom are black or Hispanic.
That’s an uncomfortable fact, but it’s a fact.
It is understandable that parents—white and black and any other ethnic cohort--want a good education for their children. They do not want their children going to schools where discipline is paramount and learning is not.
The Republican Party embraced neighborhood schools and pumped money into the once non-partisan elections in 2009. They won. The familiar collegiality on the school board devolved into partisan confrontations and rancorous meetings. Local and national ridicule followed.
The elections this year were in some part a rejection of this style of leadership as much as broader policy.
The new majority, mostly Democrats, should keep their manners in mind. But so should the Republican minority.
They still face the challenge of all big-city, public schools in the state, which must accept all children, the worst and the best in their communities. How can Wake’s system maintain its high quality education for good students and raise the performance of the worst students?
That is the big question.
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