Way to go, Wake County (N.C.) School Board! You've put our county smackdab in the middle of the national spotlight. Hurray!!
We used to grab headlines for educational excellence and innovation, and now you're fair-and-balancing those headlines with news about how un-excellent and un-innovative you're going to make our public schools. You rock. (Sort of like that iceberg that rocked the Titanic and made it so darned famous the world over.)
Nobody does it better than Stephen Colbert.
Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) is the 18th-largest school system in the United States. With more than 145,000 students and a student population that grows by leaps and bounds each year (an additional 4,000-8,000 students move into the system during each school year), WCPSS is also one of the lowest-funded school systems in the nation. Even so, WCPSS has long been held up as a model of educational excellence. Its magnet programs have consistently won awards and been replicated by urban school systems around the U.S. and the world.
But over the past year, the Wake County Board of Education in North Carolina has dismantled desegregation policies in WCPSS, restricted public access to its meetings, selected a Fox News pundit with no education experience as the district's superintendent of schools, and ordered the word "diversity" stricken from its written and spoken policies altogether. They ordered a survey of parents to determine satisfaction with the schools their children attend, and when the survey results demonstrated that more than 94% of parents were satisfied or very satisfied with their student's/students' schools, the board refused to even address its own survey in its public meetings.
In October 2009, with a less than 7% voter turnout, the Wake County Board of Education swept in a new conservative majority and swept out 30 years of leadership in the nation's models of voluntary school desegregation. The new board majority, whose campaigns were funded by national tea party conservatives and national neoconservative organizations, jeopardized current and future federal grant funding by doing away with the Wake County Public School System's (WCPSS) voluntary desegregation plans. The board is even considering doing away with WCPSS high school accreditation.
Last week, reporter Stephanie McCrummen addressed the school board's "accomplishments"in the Washington Post.
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.
In a letter to the editor published in WaPo the next day,U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan decried the board's actions.
America's strength has always been a function of its diversity, so it is troubling to see North Carolina's Wake County School Board taking steps to reverse a long-standing policy to promote racial diversity in its schools ["In N.C., a new battle on school integration," front page, Jan. 12]. The board's action has led to a complaint that has prompted an investigation by our Office for Civil Rights, but it should also prompt a conversation among educators, parents and students across America about our core values.
WCPSS has long been a leader in education despite unusually high school population growth in tandem with alarming decreases in its already-low per-capita funding rates for public education. In the 1970s, when other areas were experiencing violence as their schools responded to court-ordered integrated, WCPSS established itself as a model for voluntary desegregation and innovative partnerships with area businesses and county growth planners.
Today, however, the U.S. Office of Civil Rights (OCR) is investigating WCPSS and its new student-assignment policies. Many business leaders and most of the 12 city/town mayors in Wake County are reporting that business expansion plans are on hold while the school board determines which "neighborhood zones" will house "good schools" and which will house "needy schools." Realtors are likewise reporting that they're inundated with queries about whether home buyers will be buying into "good school zones" or whether their children will be attending one of the schools deliberately populated with students with low family incomes, disabilities, limited English proficiency, or low student achievement rates.
And all of this is happening behind closed doors, because the Wake County Board of Education has determined that its meetings are no longer open to the public. In fact, the school board has decided to make its own determinations over who can speak for what: a few months ago, the board announced that it would select "delegates" of the "sides" of issues and appoint those delegates to speak. Most committee work is done in closed meetings. Larger full-board meetings are held in a small conference room, despite the fact that larger venues have been offered at no cost.''
The school board even decided in a secretive process to hire a national tea party leader and Fox News pundit, Anthony Tata,to become the new superintendent of schools. Our last superintendent was fired last year for speaking out against the resegregation plans. But those rules about speaking out don't apply to Tata, a retired brigadier general with absolutely no educational experience: He's been officially permitted by the school board to continue his paid work as a Fox News pundit and tea party spokesperson.
Yeah, that's right -- THIS Anthony Tata of Fox News fame:
Tata was hired sight unseen (by the public, anyway) in a hastily scheduled meeting two days before Christmas. Two of the four minority-faction members were absent. No matter. So was Tata. His debut in Raleigh will come this Thursday when he's scheduled to speak to the conservative Wake County Taxpayers Association, a fact that tickles its longtime president, former state Rep. Russell Capps.
Capps is best known, education-wise, for insisting that "creation science" be taught in the public schools as an alternative to evolution. By now, Tata is best known, education-wise, for ridiculing President Barack Obama's propensity for studying the issues ("an aloof Ivy League intellectual"). In a review of Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue, Tata declared Palin "far more qualified to be president of the United States than the current occupant."
Now Stephen Colbert is bringing this news to the national front, and WCPSS is once again making headlines. Well, hurray. Hats off to the tea party for putting us in the media spotlight.
There are a number of local efforts to address the situation. The Great Schools in Wake Coalition sponsors myriad forums, workshops, and training efforts to increase awareness of the school board's efforts, provide oversight and transparency of the board's closed meetings, and help parents and other concerned Wake County residents get involved. Their newsletters covering board discussions and actions are often the only verbatim public records available about the board.
There are community-centered efforts as well -- part of a broad-spectrum grassroots coalition to address not only the school board itself but some of the root issues our county faces, such as poverty, discrimination, and the need for youth advocacy. WCPSS's long-term suspension policies, for instance, are being addressed because of grassroots efforts to dismantle the "school to prison pipeline" that is created when schools offer no educational alternatives to students disciplined via out-of-school suspensions.
Watch and read about what's going on in Wake County, North Carolina. You'll see the same things happening all across the U.S. in areas where nationally funded tea party conservatives are taking over our schools and our local governments.
Oh, hurray, tea party. Oh, hurray, Wake County Board of Education. You've put us on the map by jeopardizing the educational experiences and futures of our children. That is so awesome, youbetcha.
Here once again is the guy who has coined the term for what's going on in Wake County: "Disintegration."