SPECIAL CAROLINIAN NEWSPAPER/CASH ROC GUEST OP-ED

Inching Towards Re-Segregation and Poverty Concentration in Wake Schools

By Walter C. Farrell, Jr.*

            The Wake County’s Public School System is the latest urban district targeted for dismantling and privatization, an initiative begun under the administration of Ronald Reagan when tuition tax credits were proposed as a solution to the challenges of urban education.

Since 1990, I have followed educational reform initiatives across the country, having served ten years as the senior education and economic policy advisor to the Chair of the Joint Finance Committee in the Wisconsin Legislature (while on half-time leave as a professor of educational policy from UW-Milwaukee) when the nation’s first voucher bill was passed into law.  In 1989, I had the opportunity to serve on a Milwaukee Public Schools Community Advisory Committee that was formed to work with Harvard African American Education Professor, Charles Willie, and his former graduate student, Michael Alves, who were brought to Milwaukee to develop a desegregation plan based on the success of their controlled-choice model in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As in Wake County, a comprehensive and balanced desegregation plan was developed, but it was scuttled by the Milwaukee Public School Board, and the business community who had put the Board majority in office.  They had decided to pursue remedies that leaned toward privatization.  Since that time, an already troubled school system has experienced a widening in the achievement gap and an increase in poverty concentration as well as losing a third of its students to voucher, charter, and partnership schools that have siphoned billions of dollars from public education (without performing better than public schools, and most often worse, they replaced).

It is unlikely that Board Chair Ron Margiotta will direct additional resources to Wake’s emerging concentrated poverty schools based on his past service on the Ridgefield Park, New Jersey School Board.

In 1998, as a result of a New Jersey Supreme Court Order, New Jersey’s 31 majority African American and Latino, high poverty districts were allocated additional funding based on a historical pattern of inequity.  Beginning immediately, Ridgefield Park and other New Jersey suburban school boards aggressively lobbied against this increase in financial support for their poor counterparts, alleging that it was unfair (data gathered during my visits to the former New Jersey residential areas of Margiotta and John Tedesco).

The school boards ultimately succeeded in having the New Jersey Legislature pass a new school finance act, which in effect cancelled the subsidy.  Thus, it is doubtful that Chairman Margiotta will increase funding for the escalating number of high poverty schools that his repeal of the socioeconomic diversity policy is creating.

The Wake County Public School System is the latest urban district enveloped in controversy over educational reform.  Although the debate has focused on the elimination of Wake’s socioeconomic diversity policy, the real objective is the dismantling of public education as we know it.  This will be achieved via the removal of the cap on charter schools and the establishment of publicly-funded vouchers that can be used at private and religious schools--legislation introduced by newly chosen North Carolina Assembly Majority Leader, Paul Stam (R-37^th District, Wake County). 

This is the publicly stated plan of local, multi-millionaire businessmen, Art Pope and Bob Luddy, who are largely responsible for the election of the Wake School Board majority and of Republican majorities in both houses of the North Carolina Legislature.  Mr. Luddy, who owns private and charter schools (one of whose boards on which Wake School Board Chairman, Ron Margiotta, formerly served) stands to personally benefit from the legislation championed by Rep. Stam.

Pope and Luddy are aided in their quest by the billionaire Wichita industrialists, Charles and David Koch, who also fund candidates in school board, city council, county commission, state legislative and federal races throughout the nation to advance their privatization and anti-union agenda.  (They funded the recent attacks on collective bargaining and public education in Wisconsin.)

A casual review of campaign finance reports for the Wake County School Board and the NC Legislative Republican majorities reveals significant contributions from Luddy, Pope, Koch brothers-controlled political action committees, and their corporate, pro-privatization of public education allies throughout the nation.  Moreover, this privatization strategy has been discussed and developed at the Koch brothers’ bi-annual policy retreats held in Palm Springs, California for more than a decade.

They have been attended by Pope, Luddy, and other wealthy businesspersons, including Eli Broad, who was influential in the hiring of Anthony Tata (who graduated from the Eli Broad Superintendent’s Academy) as Superintendent of the Wake County Schools (and earlier as the Chief Operating Officer of the Washington, D.C. Public Schools).  This is the same Eli Broad who is providing one year’s salary for Tata’s assistant for curriculum matters, who will likely have significant input into Tata’s school plans.

A broad cross-section of Wake County residents has shown strong support for the Wake Public Schools, in general, and the diversity policy, in particular.  But what has been most impressive is the steadfast support of the broader business community that recognizes the key role of the public schools in Wake County’s future prosperity and social stability.  

As a graduate of the segregated Raleigh City Schools, I watched from afar as Wake County peacefully implemented a nationally recognized socioeconomic diversity policy that kept its school system from lapsing back into the segregated schools of my youth.

Wake Schools are some of the most successful in the nation and have managed to successfully integrate poor and middle-class children into effective public schools.  To sustain this accomplishment, future educational decisions will need to be made at the ballot box with a significant voter turnout (much larger than the 10% who participated in the last school board election) from those who support public education.

*Walter C. Farrell, Jr. is professor of social work at UNC-Chapel Hill and a Fellow of the National Educational Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado-Boulder.  This essay is a summary of his research presentations at the Great Lakes Education Reform Conference in Novi, MI on March ,7 2011 and at the Abbott Leadership Institute at Rutgers University-Newark on March 12, 2011

WAKE BOARD COMES UP WITH “MYSTERIOUS” NUMBERS

By Cash Michaels

Editor

            The headline of the March 9, 2011 story in The News & Observer was clear:

            “WAKE CAN’T TELL FEDS HOW MANY STUDENTS BUSED FOR DIVERSITY.”

            “Wake County school officials… can’t provide detailed information on the number of students who were assigned to schools for socioeconomic diversity,” the story reported. “…Ann Majestic, the school board’s attorney, said Wake didn’t track which neighborhoods…were reassigned for diversity reasons.”

            On WRAL-TV that same March 9, 2011 evening, the same story, this one titled,

“WAKE SCHOOLS DIDN’T KEEP BUSING RECORDS.”

            “…some requested data was missing.”

            “…school leaders admitted they never kept records of their busing program.”

            “School board member John Tedesco said the lack of data on why students were bused may make it difficult to determine how well the diversity policy worked,” reported WRAL-TV that evening.

            And yet, in its March 22, 2011 official response to the federal racial bias complaint the NC NAACP filed against the Wake School Board with the US Education Dept.’s Office of Civil Rights, there it was, detailed percentages of students who are bused starting on page 30 of the 46-page report.

            A section examining how socioeconomic diversity (SES), the Wake School System’s previous student assignment policy that is still in effect until the board’s neighborhood schools policy takes hold once a new assignment plan is adopted, allegedly “…has led to disproportionately long bus rides for poor and minority students.”

            In short, according to the board’s official response to OCR, since its inception in 2000, SES in Wake County has never helped economically disadvantaged students academically achieve, and helped even less when those students were bused far from home.

            The section then displays a spreadsheet that “…shows the numbers and percentages of all WCPSS students who have bus routes within the ranges of 0-5 miles, 5.1 to 10 miles, 10.1 miles to 15 miles, and overt 15 miles to their assigned schools.”

            “As shown in the excerpts… Black and Hispanic students have much longer bus rides than White students in Wake County,” the OCR response report adds.

            Several charts measuring academic proficiency rates for black students based on the length of their bus commute to base schools give percentages “proving”, according to the report, that the longer “poor and minority students” travel to and from school by bus, the worse they perform academically.

            “Members of the Board majority have long believed, based on their own experiences and what their constituents have told them, that poor and minority students carried a disproportionate share of the burden in the District’s “busing for diversity” approach,” the report opined.

            “The data,” it continued, “strongly support this belief.”

            The only data referenced per this issue, however, is Exhibit 72,  information provided by Wake Schools System staff to the now-defunct Student Assignment Committee, which was chaired, ironically, by John Tedesco.

            “…the spreadsheets staff provided to the Committee show that students who are transported “out of zone” to attend base schools farther away tend to have a lower proficiency across several measures when compared to their “in-zone” peers,” the report cited.

But what is this data based on if just three weeks ago, Wake School System officials couldn’t even give OCR the total number of students bused for diversity for the past three years in the first place?

            And if Tedesco told WRAL-TV that, “…the lack of data on why students were bused may make it difficult to determine how well the diversity policy worked,” then how is the school board’s report able to factually prove, beyond the Republican board members own feelings, that longer bus rides under SES do hurt students of color academically?

            In short, either the school system actually has those busing for diversity numbers - widely believed to be between 3-4 percent of the total student population from 2007 to 2009, or they don’t.

            The Carolinian reached out to the Wake County School System for an explanation, but no comment was forthcoming by press time Wednesday.

            This newspaper also asked several board members for an explanation.

            No one could answer. In fact, one board member, Kevin Hill, replied, “Good question,” admitting that he was never made aware how this analysis came about with the numbers OCR was looking for.

Irv Joyner, one of the NCNAACP attorneys who helped craft the federal complaint, wasn’t buying the report’s findings.

            “I agree that there are some mysterious numbers being used or the Board has been providing contradictory information to the public and OCR,” he told The Carolinian after reviewing the report. “It seems to me that you need hard and accurate numbers in order to create percentages.”

             “The issue before OCR is whether the schools are being segregated on the basis of race. That decision is measured, in large part, by the absolute numbers,” attorney Joyner continued. “Are African-American students being assigned to predominately one-race schools and are Whites being assigned to predominately White schools? The Board's response seems to center on its motivation, which is questionable. The issue is the "effects" of the assignments.”

             Joyner concluded, "The issue of the student achievement -which is another separate issue - cannot be measured by mere numbers. You have to look at who is being assigned where and for what reasons are they there. You also have to look at their prior educational skills and development. Thus, this issue is more complicated than the Board would lead the public/OCR to believe. At best, the answer to this side of the review deals only with motivation and not with the issue of re-segregation.”

                                                            -30-

WALNUT CREEK ELEMENTARY PRINCIPAL DETERMINED TO SUCCEED

By Cash Michaels

Editor

            The job that Corey A. Moore now faces will be a tough one, but his community won’t allow him to face it alone.

            Moore was appointed last week by the Wake County Public School to become principal of the new Walnut Creek Elementary School on Sunnybrook and Rock Quarry Road in Southeast Raleigh. He was warmly welcomed to the task during the second community forum last Friday at Compassionate Tabernacle of Faith Missionary Baptist Church, focusing on the anticipated needs of the designated high poverty school.

            When it formally opens this August, the 700-plus student body at Walnut Creek Elementary is projected to be 81 percent free-and-reduced lunch, and 52 percent low-performing. Most experts say high poverty schools need strong principal leadership, a committed teaching staff, devoted parents and extra resources.

            Moore, who has served as principal before in Raleigh, Greensboro and Durham, and was last an assistant principal at Middle Creek High School in Apex, says he has already hit the ground running towards making Walnut Creek the best elementary school possible.

            “First let me say how estatic, how happy, and how excited I am to have been …appointed principal of Walnut Creek Elementary School,” Moore told the well-attended gathering.

Moore, a native of Chocowinity in Beaufort County, is a graduate of Western Carolina University. Both of his parents were ministers who valued education.

            Moore’s first job in education was in 1996 in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Public schools, and he has served as assistant principal and principal in various school systems across the state ever since.

            “I believe that my experiences and past have prepared me for this opportunity, and I’m standing prepared to lead in a direction that will take this school straight up,” Moore assured.

            Wake Supt. Anthony Tata, District 4 Wake School Board member Keith Sutton, Area Supt. Julye Mizelle, and numerous educators, parents and others, applauded Moore, and pledged to work with him.

            “He has the personality and the background to really lead the school in a very positive direction,” Ms. Mizell said.

                                                            -30-

BOARD HAD NO PLAN FOR HIGH POVERTY SCHOOLS, SAYS AdvancED

By Cash Michaels

Editor

           

            EDITOR - This is part 5 of a multi-part look at Walnut Creek Elementary School, and the other high poverty schools that the conservative-led Wake County School Board will be creating in Southeast Raleigh as it moves forward with its controversial neighborhood schools policy. Studies consistently show black and Hispanic students are relegated to poor instruction, a lack of resources and a second-rate education in high poverty, racially identifiable schools. The property values in neighborhoods with high poverty schools also suffer, as families move away.

            The Carolinian examines the question, “Will all or any of this happen in Wake County?”

                                                __________________________

           

“Unprofessional, unwise, unwarranted and everything else you can think of.”

            That was Wake School Board District 4 member Keith Sutton’s blistering assessment of the AdvancEd accreditation review report’s finding last week that his Republican colleagues on the board, while willing to create more high poverty schools filled with economically disadvantaged children of color - courtesy of the GOP’s neighborhood schools policy - apparently had no intention of giving those schools the extra resources and staffing needed that AdvancEd was told by concerned school principals they must have.

            “Going forward with these high poverty schools will be a disaster educationally,” Richard Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a Washington, D.C. think tank, told The Carolinian during a visit to Raleigh this week.

            These two paragraphs from the explosive March 16^th 15-page AdvancED report tell the story:

            Each of the five [Republican] Board members indicated a reliance on their ‘own’ data to support their conclusions and defend their actions. Board member John Tedesco asserted that the previous Student Assignment Policy distributed low achievers throughout the system so that their needs would be hidden and consequently not be met. Mr. Tedesco has repeatedly advocated for concentrating low achieving students in a school so that their needs are not hidden.

            However, when Board members were asked how they would ensure that schools with a significant population of low achieving students would be supported, there were no solutions or plans offered. High school principals noted deep concern that the new [neighborhood schools] policy would significantly compromise their ability to meet the needs of students. Additionally, principals indicated that there is no plan for providing the additional resources for a school with a high proportion of low achieving students. Given that the school system is facing significant financial challenges there is much doubt among administrators that the necessary resources will be available and targeted to support the need for instructional interventions.

            Calling it a “very thorough report,” Sutton says AdvancED accurately captured the behavior of the Republican board majority over the past 14 months, and how it has impaired the total board’s ability to lead and provide proper governance to the school system.

In a statement, Board Chairman Ron Margiotta said he disagreed, “…with certain opinions expressed in the report, especially unfair characterizations of individual board members’ motives…”

            Both Margiotta and fellow GOP board member John Tedesco have told The Carolinian in the past they will not respond to requests for comment from this African-American newspaper.

            Approximately a hundred people were interviewed by the AdvancEd Special Review Team last month.

            “The team reviewed student achievement data, Board policies, minutes and videos of Board meetings, and written communications,” the report states. “Additionally, the team interviewed every Board member, the Superintendent, key central office administrators, community groups, high school principals, parents, teachers and students.”

            What the report documents about the board’s attitude towards managing the high poverty-low performing schools it will almost certainly create is perplexing.

            As The Carolinian has reported in its ongoing multi-part series on the prospect of more high poverty schools in Wake County, the school board’s Republican majority flatly rejected an amendment to its neighborhood schools resolution on March 23^rd, 2010 - a year ago this week - that if adopted then, would have mandated a cost analysis of what running high poverty schools in the system would require in terms of staffing, transportation and fiscal obligations.

            “In order to retain teachers in high poverty schools over the long haul, you would have to pay them a premium on the order of 43 percent more, so if their base salary is $50,000, you’d have to pay them considerably more to get them to stay,” says education researcher Richard Kahlenberg. “These are numbers that, in the current fiscal climate, no one would support. Those extra resources won’t flow into the schools, and you’ll end up with inferior schools that aren’t going to provide the kind of education Wake County students expect.”

            But board Republicans voted “no,” saying then such planning wasn’t needed, though later acknowledging that new high poverty schools would be created.

            “I think it was Winston Churchill who said, “Failure to plan is a plan to fail,” Board member Kevin Hill, who introduced the failed amendment, told The Carolinian in reaction last October.

            A year of planning lost, because the board majority thought it was not necessary.

            New Wake Supt. Anthony Tata may now include a high poverty schools strategy in his upcoming overall 2011- 12 strategic planning for the school system, in conjunction with Tata’s evolving student assignment plan due in several weeks. But by his own proposed budget, he’s already losing $52.00 per pupil spending in the system because of budget cuts (assuming that the NC Dept. of Public Instruction holds to its projection of only a 5 percent (or $40 million) cut to its education allotment to Wake.

             And that’s only for next year before Tata knows for sure just how many high poverty schools he will have.

What happens to high poverty schools, like the new Walnut Creek Elementary opening this August, the following year when Tata knows he’s losing at least $28 million in federal stimulus funding, in addition to further state cuts?

            The fact that the Wake School Board majority never attempted to plan for any of this, as the AdvancEd report confirmed when they were all interviewed last month, proves that the board Republicans were rolling the dice on this, and many other issues impacting the system’s most vulnerable children of color.

            “To make these kinds of decisions, to make these changes in policies, and to do so without a clear plan, and to do so without regard to data and research, was just everything from unprofessional, unwise, unwarranted and everything else you can think of,” Sutton pointedly told The Carolinian.

            The Southeast Raleigh school board representative wasn’t the only one disgusted by the report’s findings.

“It shows intentionality,” said Rev. William Barber, president of the NCNAACP, the group that filed the original complaint against the school board with AdvancED.

            “The five [Republican] members of this board are resegregationists; they are regressive; they are backwards,” Barber continued. “We no longer have to hypothesize what this board will do. This board is so egregious in their regressive actions, and so committed to their ideology rather than what research and the law says.”

            The AdvancED report, developed by the Georgia accrediting agency’s Special Review Team which conducted a two-day probe, not only confirmed the NCNAACP complaint that the Wake School Board was not following its own policies, but uncovered much, much more of particular concern to Wake’s African-American community.

            That included Republican board members, based on “their own data,” rejecting school system generated evidence proving that black and economically disadvantaged students have been academically improving under the current socioeconomic diversity plan still in force, for the past several years.

            The AdvancEd report confirmed that improvement.

            “A review of student achievement data by the Special Review Team indicated that the system is experiencing noted improvements,” the report cited. “School system staff provided student achievement data that indicated the system is closing the achievement between Caucasian and minority students; decreasing the dropout rate for minorities at a faster pace than Caucasians: improving the graduation rate for minorities a compared to similar urban systems in the United States; and increasing the performance of students in Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) programs.”

            The AdvancED report continued, “High school principals indicated that student performance has been steadily improving over the past decade,” and particularly on state end-of-grade testing since 2007-08.

            Because the Republican majority on the Wake School Board has done very little by way of improving student achievement, overall or otherwise, in the 14 months they’ve been in office, it is apparent that these improvements are chalked up to reforms already underway - in this case the 2007 Curriculum Management Audit commissioned by former Wake Supt. Del Burns - under the previous Wake socioeconomic diversity policy.

            The board majority apparently could care less, evidence shows.

            “Each of the four newly-elected Board members, as well as [Chairman] Ron Margiotta, refused to acknowledge the student achievement data compiled by the school system and displayed on large posters in the Board meeting room,” the AdvancEd report states.

            To acknowledge academic improvements their regime isn’t responsible for apparently is something the board majority has no intention of doing, so they’ve done the opposite.

            The GOP board members, along with their loyal supporters in the media and elsewhere, to this day continuously portray WCPSS as continuing to “fail” black and economically disadvantaged students, knowing full well that their system staff has proof positive that the exact opposite is true.

            “In several instances,” the AdvancED report cites, “Board members indicated that Wake County was struggling with improving the graduation rate of African-American males and that Wake County Public Schools are not keeping pace with Charlotte - Mecklenburg Schools. Although Wake County trails the state average as well as the success rate in Guilford County Schools, according to data provided by staff, the graduation rate among African-American males exceeds that of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and the national average.”

            “That has bothered me for quite a while,” board member Sutton told The Carolinian. “I’m not sure how you serve on a board where you are trying to make change and support a system, but every chance you get, you go out and give false information or false data about that organization.”

            “To me it almost seems like, at one point, a well designed media campaign to crush the system, make it look bad, and then [they’ll] build it back up again with these new policies and new directives. I don’t think that’s good from an ethical standpoint,” Sutton added, “… and I think it’s not really permissible from our own policy standpoint.”

“It’s a sad confirmation of what we have known and what we have said,” NCNAACP Pres. Rev.Barber said.

“There is no comprehensive strategic plan, and they don’t have a clear vision; they don’t have a clear set of priorities to go from here forth,” said Yevonne Brannon, chair of Great School in Wake Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group that has opposed the board’s neighborhood schools policy.

AdvancED has advised the Wake School Board that it has a year to clear up the many issues documented in the report that have crippled its governance. The system has been placed on “accredited warn” status. Another special review team is scheduled to visit again on Nov. 30^th to see what progress has been made.

Wake Supt. Tata says he will incorporate many of the recommendations from the AdvancEd report in his strategic plan.

A majority of the board must approve that plan.

                                                            -30-

WHAT THE NEW PRINCIPAL OF WALNUT CREEK ELEMENTARY NEEDS TO KNOW

By Cash Michaels

Editor

            EDITOR - This is part 4 of a multi-part look at Walnut Creek Elementary School, and the other high poverty schools that the conservative-led Wake County School Board will be creating in Southeast Raleigh as it moves forward with its controversial neighborhood schools policy. Studies consistently show black and Hispanic students are relegated to poor instruction, a lack of resources and a second-rate education in high poverty, racially identifiable schools. The property values in neighborhoods with high poverty schools also suffer, as families move away.

            The Carolinian examines the question, “Will all or any of this happen in Wake County?”

                                                __________________________

            Last Tuesday, the Wake Public School Board announced that it had chosen Corey A. Moore, currently an assistant principal at Middle Creek High School in Apex, as the principal of the new Walnut Creek Elementary School in Southeast Raleigh.

            When the new $25 million traditional calendar school opens in August, it will be home to a predominately black and Hispanic student population from the surrounding Southeast Raleigh neighborhood that could be as high as 81 percent Free and Reduced lunch (F&R), with 52 percent classified as “low-performing.”

            For all intent and purposes, a super high poverty school, one that Wake Supt. Anthony Tata, in his 2011-12 proposed budget, promises will have a “strong opening” when it comes to much-needed resources and staffing.

            Observers say it’s not the “strong opening” of Walnut Creek they’re worried about, but the continuing commitment of needed resources to the school in the years after if it remains high poverty.

“In the research that I’ve been reviewing over the years, in schools with high levels of poverty, it is a difficult challenge to keep highly qualified teachers in those buildings, and to attract talented, creative, hard driving principals to help kids learn,” Wake Supt. Del Burns told The Carolinian in February 2010, days after he resigned for refusing to carry out the Wake School Board’s neighborhood schools policy. “You can find those exceptions…one school’s heroic efforts, but you can’t sustain that.”

Even Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker, a staunch critic of the Republican-led Wake School Board, is concerned about whether the board is up to the challenge of equitably funding the high poverty schools it creates.

“There’s no question that if we have a series of high poverty schools like Walnut Creek Elementary that The Carolinian has been writing about, it’s going to be very hard for the students to achieve,” Meeker says.

Moore, who has also served as principal at Weldon High here, and principal at Hampton Elementary in Greensboro ten years ago, will get a $7,000 bonus, on top of his $78,102 annual salary, to lead Walnut Creek.

            But before Principal Moore takes a nickel, he better give Stan Frazier a call.

            Frazier is a retired principal from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public School System (CMS), which is in deep financial trouble after spending tens of millions trying to fix its plethora of high poverty/low performing schools - ten of which are now scheduled for closure as a result of the high costs.

            An alumnus of Johnson C. Smith University, Frazier, a native Charlottean, spent 35 years in education (20 years more than Moore, and 33 beyond Wake Supt. Tata’s professional experience), 15 of which he served as a principal of schools both rich and poor.

            “I worked at one school which was very rich. The homes were as large as the school,” Frazier said during an interview for a mini-documentary last October for Great Schools in Wake Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group that opposes the Wake School Board’s neighborhood schools policy.

            “And I’ve worked at several impoverished schools. I worked at one school that had 92 percent F&R, but we had the third highest growth in reading in CMS.”

            The veteran principal made it a point to role model a 100 percent commitment to the communities in which his schools were in, usually being the first at the school in the morning, and the last to leave in the evening.

            Frazier’s long experience in CMS high poverty schools taught him that to motivate high poverty/academically challenged students, you have to motivate and energize the world they live in.

            It’s not easy, thus the $7,000 bonus Tata is giving Moore.

Coming to class five days a week during school hours isn’t enough to help academically challenged students, Frazier insists. Motivating parents, teachers and everyone else in a collective to capture the minds and hearts of the students was the goal, Frazier says, or else failure would always be their calling card.

“In impoverished schools, you don’t see as many parents that are involved [compared to upper-class parents]. There could be a number of reasons,” Frazier says. “Many parents work two and three jobs. Many parents don’t work, and they’re embarrassed because their experiences in school weren’t as good.”

“Often you have young parents who are embarrassed sometimes to come to classes. There’s a new culture and new generation. You may have some grandmothers who are 33; great-grandmothers who are 43; great-great-great-grandmothers who are 53; great-great-great-great-grandmothers who are 63. So the culture and dynamics have really changed,” Frazier says.

"Sometimes, guardianship is not always clear in low-income households, and as principal, you have to find a way to determine who is responsible for a student’s needs,” Frazier adds.

Being “very visible” in the community of that high poverty school is another factor for principals in building a trusting relationship, and working partnerships with the parents of children attending in that neighborhood.

“I would meet with the neighborhood associations,” Frazier said. “I would go down to the [community] centers. I would shop in some of the grocery stores in the area that I worked. I would visit churches in the area where our kids attended.”

Principal Frazier also found himself playing basketball and tennis in the neighborhood, “…so I was always visible, whether I lived in that community or not, and [the students] would see me on occasions.”

Frazier even visited students in apartment complexes that were deemed dangerous or unsafe to visit.

“But if I showed that I really welcomed them to the school, I had to show that I was part of their community,” Principal Frazier said.

“Some of those things are lacking now for fear, for unknown reasons, but it was pertinent to me that I would always be visible in the community.”

What about teachers in high poverty schools? Teacher turnover in CMS high poverty schools is high, primarily because many are first or second-year instructors with very little urban education training.

“You have many young teachers who come in frightened because they’ve never worked in a inner city school before, or with urban kids,” Frazier says. “Many of our teachers in Charlotte-Meck were recruited from Pennsylvania, which was perceived to have some of the better teachers. Many of these teachers came from rural communities, that may have had no minority kids. So when you come into an urban school, you may not understand culture; you may not understand the dynamics of family; your social mores are totally different; so it would have to be a total paradigm shift.”

“Now if teachers were willing to do that, the growth could be there,” Principal Frazier continued. “Some teachers fit right in; some fit in too much; and some were too frightened to fit in. The ones that were too frightened didn’t sustain, or they wanted to move to a different school.”

“The ones that sustained became excellent teachers.”

Frazier carefully interviewed his teaching candidates, not only to ensure that they could do the job, but also to minimize what normally is the high turnover ratio associated with high poverty schools. His teachers had to “enjoy” working a “mostly diverse environment.”

That meant joining the principal on a school bus and riding through neighborhoods to see the tough environments where their most challenged students and their families lived. It also meant taking teachers to Latino restaurants, ordering off a menu they didn’t understand, and trying to communicate with the waiters what they wanted.

“I wanted them to feel and understand what that was like, because often when there are cultural challenges, if we can’t walk a mile in a [student’s] shoe we don’t understand what we’re dealing with,” Frazier said.

The veteran Charlotte educator said it all starts with the commitment from the principal to the students and the community, especially when it comes to a high poverty school that must succeed. Principal Frazier noted his “extremely long hours” worked that even his CMS superiors were not aware of. The first mistake that new principals make, Frazier insists, is not immediately making efforts to solidly connect with the powerbrokers of the neighborhood in which that school resides. Building solid partnerships and relationships with civic and religious leaders there, opens lines of communication, and, over time, develops levels of much needed support.

“I invited the neighborhood association to have their meetings in my building,” Principal Frazier said. “The premise was, ‘This is your school, the school is in your neighborhood.'”

Strategically, Frazier always made sure that he had a student activity going on in the building so community people could see empowerment on display, and the halls adorned with positive representations of either work being done at the school, or works that “deemed success.”

“The conversations were always about success, and offering things even the magnet schools weren’t offering,” Frazier said. That promoted important partnerships, especially with the faith-based community. By attending many of the churches his students attended, Principal Frazier was able to attract volunteers to work at the school assisting those students.

That also helped with discipline problems, as many of the older church volunteers would encourage students to work harder in their studies, and have better attendance in school.

If there was one quality that Principal Frazier valued as important as academic achievement with his students, it was the building of character.

“My thing was always building character. If you build character, those kids will follow you everywhere, and they’ll thrive on it, but you have to know how to do that. Zero tolerance is not the way.”

So if Walnut Creek Principal Corey Moore is to be successful, he has to make sure, according to the Frazier template, that he hires teachers who understand the craft of their job, and assimilating that skill to teaching kids who may learn differently.

Disgard the conventional way of teaching if necessary.  Standing up before a class and lecturing to kids sitting in a row of chairs may not work in reaching children who are at a different energy level. Use music when appropriate, and be savvy about where your students are coming from, and how they see the world.

“Be a builder,” Frazier adds, and have teachers also call parents for positive things that their children accomplish, not just the negative.

After talking with Frazier, Principal Moore may also want to give his old boss, former Wake Supt. Del Burns, a call as well.

If Moore is to be successful, and many in the community hope he will be for the sake of his new students, then he must be prepared to fight his own superintendent, if necessary, to ensure that he gets all of the resources the principal of a super high poverty school will need to improve student achievement.

And the community must help him.
        “It is clear that, in those cases for the children to succeed [in high poverty schools], there’s a requirement for much greater resources than in other schools,” Burns told The Carolinian last year, “ and I think it would be very important, if that’s the case, to ask the questions as to how those resources will be provided, and to make sure that once provided, that they remain in the schools.”

Translation - beyond Supt. Tata’s 2011-12 proposed budget in the face of ever-shrinking revenue streams; lower per pupil spending; and more school system staff layoffs to come in the face of a growing student population; the African-American community must consistently and effectively demand that Walnut Creek Elementary and other high poverty schools created by the Wake School Board’s looming long-term student assignment plan, must be adequately, and continually staffed and resourced to meet the challenges ahead.

Anything less, observers say, condemns those students, in the words of a Wake County Superior Court judge, “academic genocide.”

Editor’s note - The community can weigh in on the future of Walnut Creek Elementary School will meet again this Friday, 7 to 9 p.m. at Compassionate Tabernacle of Faith Missionary Baptist Church, 2320 Compassionate Drive in Raleigh.

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INCREDIBLE ADVANCED REPORT ON WAKE SCHOOL BOARD

    Have you read the AdvancED accreditation report on the Wake County School Board yet? Do you have your DVD copy of "Titanic" handy? Same disaster, less water. This thing literally rakes the conservatives on the board as a bunch of know-nothing political amateurs who are destroying one of the nation's best public school systems with all deliberate speed. 
    Here are some of the juicy highlights:
     Over the past 14 months, the Wake County Public Schools have experienced significant governance issues that have caused tremendous uncertainty throughout the community. This period of instability began during the Board of Education meeting on December 1, 2009. At the beginning of this meeting four new Board members (John Tedesco, Chris Malone, Debra Goldman, and Deborah Prickett) were installed as a result of the October 2009 election. Once installed the four new Board members joined forces with current Board member, Ron Margiotta, to launch a premeditated act that resulted in destabilizing the school system and community. Interviews with Board members revealed that these five members planned to set in motion actions that were designed to disrupt and redirect the work of the system.
     As Chris Malone noted in his interview these were calculated acts to "deliver a shot across the bow." The resulting actions dramatically reshaped the environment and direction of the school system.


     During the review process staff presented data that showed the school system was experiencing positive gains related to student achievement. In interviews, some board members expressed a different view and claimed to have their “own data” that refuted the data shared by staff and other Board members. This lack of alignment between staff and board has led to ineffective policy decisions. A review of student achievement data by the Special Review Team indicated that the system is experiencing noted improvements. School system staff provided student achievement data that indicated the system is closing the achievement gap between Caucasian and minority students; decreasing the dropout rate for minorities at a faster pace than Caucasians; improving the graduation rate for minorities as compared to similar urban systems in the United States; and increasing the performance of students in Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) programs. High School principals indicated that student performance has been steadily improving over the past decade.

As exhibited in the school system’s charts and graph below, the system provided numerous examples of evidence that demonstrate the school system’s gains in student performance. For example the following chart illustrates the system’s success in closing the achievement gaps

     Interviews with Board members revealed a very different perception. Each of the four newly- elected Board members, as well as Ron Margiotta, refused to acknowledge the student achievement data compiled by the school system and displayed on large posters in the Board meeting room. Each of the five Board members indicated a reliance on their 'own' data to support their conclusions and defend their actions. Board member John Tedesco asserted that the previous Student Assignment Policy distributed low achievers throughout the system so that their needs would be hidden and consequently not be met. Mr. Tedesco has repeatedly advocated for concentrating low achieving students in a school so that their needs are not hidden.

However, when Board members were asked how they would ensure that schools with a significant population of low achieving students would be supported there were no solutions or plans offered. High school principals noted deep concern that the new policy would significantly compromise their ability to meet the needs of students. Additionally, principals indicated that there is no plan for providing the additional resources for a school with an exceptionally high proportion of low achieving students. Given that the school system is facing significant financial challenges there is much doubt among administrators that the necessary resources will be available and targeted to support the need for instructional interventions.

       In several instances, Board members indicated that Wake County was struggling with improving the graduation rate of African-American males and that Wake County Public Schools are not keeping pace with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. Although Wake County trails the state average as well as the success rate in Guilford County Schools, according to data provided by staff, the graduation rate among African-American males exceeds that of Charlotte- Mecklenburg Schools and the national average.

     Since December 1, 2009 there have been several meetings of the Board in which members of the Board have added action items at the beginning of the meeting in clear violation of their own Board policy. Most of these items are in the form of resolutions that have been drafted by one or more members of the Board. When resolutions are presented, the Board is expected to act on the resolution even though all members of the Board may be inadequately prepared to consider the resolution prior to voting. In addition, late additions to the agenda make it impossible for the superintendent and professional staff to provide the Board with relevant and reliable information related to the resolution. The practice of adding action items at the start of a meeting is being done to deliberately place other Board members at a disadvantage. As Board member Chris Malone indicated in his interview, "we deliberately added these items to the agenda to make an opening statement." Many members of the Board indicated that this practice has had a significant negative impact on the Board's ability to conduct professional, informed meetings representative of an effective governing body.

      The Wake County Public Schools have experienced significant growth resulting in a majority minority student population. Most systems in the nation that have experienced the type of change that Wake County has experienced in the past 10 years have also experienced a decline in student achievement. However Wake County has closed the achievement gap and increased achievement levels for minorities as well as decreased drop-out rates while increasing graduation rates. The vast majority of high school principals, teachers, students, and parents indicated during the interview process a belief in the benefits of the prior Student Assignment Policy and concern with the potential negative impact of the recent changes. In fact, high school principals noted that the previous policy did not create unstable environments nor did it result in low performing students not getting the support they needed to succeed. Student performance data clearly indicated that low performing students were realizing gains in student achievement that outpaced their peers in other school systems.

        What more do you need to know? The school board is a miserable failure. We must continue fighting for our children!