How NOT to Respond to Reports Critical of Wake County School Board

In case you missed the latest in the agony and the ecstasy that is the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), here are this week's headlines for the leading educational stories in the local paper, the News and Observer:
3/12/11 (School Board Member) Goldman's child sent to out-of-zone school, soon followed by
3/15/11 (WCPSS Superintendent) Tata to look into transfer
(Short version: Board Member Goldman's middle school daughter was one of only 15 students out of the 140,000+ students in the system to receive a little-used administrative procedure to transfer out of her usual school choices that requires merely an oral request, rather than the more extensive paperwork necessary for traditional transfer requests.)

3/15/11 Play nice, audit tells board
(Short version: An outside audit conducted by Superintendent Tata's educational training organization concluded that the WCPSS school board's public fighting, disrespect for fellow board members, and even name calling was damaging the school system's image with the public and overshadowing all the good work the schools were doing. You can read the entire 52 page audit on the WPCSS website using this link.)

The biggie, however, was this one:
3/17/11 Schools lost Wake's trust, report says
(Short version: The WCPSS accrediting agency, AdvancED, is giving the school board one year to clean up its act or risk the system losing accreditation. AdvancED accused the Republican majority of alienating much of its constituency by giving inadequate notice of major action and ignoring data when making major policy decisions. Because the system's governance had created "a climate of uncertainty, suspicion, and mistrust throughout the community," AdvancED gave WCPSS its second toughest rating, Accreditation Warning," which means that it is a serious problem that must be addressed within a year in order to remain accredited. You can read the entire 15 page report on the WCPSS website using this link.)

That story broke, by the way, two days after Superintendent Tata presented his budget cuts for the 2011-2012 school year, and on the same day as Tata was meeting with officials of the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which is investigating WCPSS' elimination of its diversity policy.

My two-bit response to all this good news is:

YA THINK?
After a year in which school board meetings have become a zoo, with many citizens regularly protesting and even getting arrested, while the board members insult each other in front of the public, AND the NAACP is bringing lawsuits and administrative actions against the system, AND our school system has been publicly criticized from such national figures as the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, former president Bill Clinton, and even Steven Colbert, AND just plain old residents such as myself are writing blog posts like Wake School Board Majority Should Be Ashamed....yes, I think it is reasonable to say that there are some serious governance issues here.

However, how are the Republicans responding to these critiques? Well, good old Apex Representative and NC House Majority Leader Paul Stam (sponsor of the bill to give tax credits to families who pull their children out of school in order to send them to private school or homeschools, which I wrote about in this blog post) is one of several Republicans who have introduced a bill to effectively bypass the well-established tradition among ALL of American education of outside accreditation, and instead create a state-run accrediting agency. The bill would also PROHIBIT any North Carolina higher education institutions (colleges, universities, or community colleges) from considering whether or not a candidate's high school is accredited when making admission, scholarship, or loan decisions. (You can read the full text of the bill, HR 342: High School Accreditation, through this link.)

I'm sorry, but I think this is the same "heads in the sand" thinking that I criticized the WCPSS board in my post Why Wake County Board Should Continue Accreditation with AdvancED. I know it sounds naive to say this, but if there is anything that should be above politics, it should be our children's future. A community will come to pieces if it can't trust the people responsible for their children's education. That is the point of OUTSIDE, NON-POLITICAL, UNBIASED accreditation agencies like AdvancED. They aren't Republicans, pushing more charter schools and lower budgets, etc., and they aren't Democrats, pushing more early intervention and social programs for disadvantage populations, etc. They come in without an agenda, and say, Are the policies fair? Are children being treated equally? Are people--teachers, administrators, support staff, and even BOARD MEMBERS--do their jobs right at the level of quality that the public deserves to expect? They also have a regional and national perspective, and can comment on how a system is doing vis-a-vis their peers in the state, area, and country.

A state agency will be immediately suspect of bias. Even if it can avoid a partisan bias, which seems difficult, given the increasing involvement of the NC legislature in educational issues, it will certainly seem to have a bias to continue accreditation of NC schools to maintain the state's reputation. I mean, isn't that why it is being created? What purpose would it serve but to provide NC schools with some alternative accreditation if AdvancED pulls their, as they are threatening to do in Wake and Burke county (coincidentally enough, most, if not all, of the co-sponsors of the bill come from those two counties).

Also, this view point is very provincial. Outside this state, college specify requirements of accreditation from regional accrediting organizations, so it would not help with the thousands of NC graduates who want to attend higher ed institutions outside of North Carolina. However, it would probably diminish the national reputation of North Carolina colleges and universities, not to mention setting a bad precedent of the legislature messing around in the UNC admissions policies. ( And I thought the Republicans were supposed to be the party of less government interference....)

Wake County can not continue to ignore the big rifts in our community over school issues. But things seem to be getting better since Superintendent Tata came on board. The Board has been acting more professionally. They actually managed to go on a weekend retreat and come back with something constructive. The WCPSS has been open about these critical reports and have posted them on their websites. I think the general mood is hopeful that some healing and compromises can take place. However, that is only possible if people feel that they have been listened to and respected, even if there are disagreements and ultimately their positions don't win. And it only works if people feel like they can trust their school system.

In my opinion, HR 342 would only make things worse, not better.

Why Wake County Board Should Continue Accreditation with AdvancedED

All in all, it hasn't been a good week for the Wake County Board of Education.

After the first three days of the week being either early release, cancelled, or opened late due to ice, school were having a rocky week. Then Wednesday night, the Board had another public meeting filled with angry and concerned parents. This time the contention was over statements by some of the Board that they might just choose to drop their accredited status, rather than answer the questions being posed by AdvancED, the accrediting agency for the Wake system. The Board majority's compromise decision was to write a letter to AdvancED regarding the restrictions under which they would agree to cooperate with the agency's attempts to investigate charges of racial discrimination and improper board procedures lodged by the state's NAACP chapter. Less than 24 hours later, the Board received AdvancED's response, which was basically "Sorry, Charlie." I'm sure it was stated in more appropriate legalese, but AdvancED could have reduced it to the immortal words of the Jeffrey Rush character in my favorite movie of the moment, The King's Speech, when he said, "My game, my turf, my rules." That is, the whole point of accreditation is to have an experienced, unbiased, outside team of educational experts look at the operation of a school to assure the public of its quality (or alert them to lack thereof). They can't really do that if the schools they are examining tell them what parts of the system they can and can not look into.

Then, on Friday, the head educator in the entire country, the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, chose to single out Wake Country among all the public school systems in the country to question its commitment to racial equity. And this was not an off-hand comment captured on someone's iPhone; it was stated in a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post expressing his concerns about the WCPSS as depicted in a Washington Post article that I mentioned earlier this week. (Click here to see the letter in the Washington Post.)

Although it may not seem like it, I really try hard to understand the point of view of the Republican majority on the School Board, and I do my best to see them in their best light. Nonetheless, I have to say that I think it would be foolish for the Board to continue down this destructive path towards non-accreditation. There are three major arguments against pursuing this course of action:

1. Lack of Accreditation Will Hurt Graduating Students

Accreditation is the accepted procedure for colleges to know you are coming from a respectable school system. Losing your accreditation--or voluntarily withdrawing from accreditation when under an investigation--makes the system look fishy. Board Chair Margiotta, in his ignorance?arrogance? I don't know, I'm having a hard time finding a more neutral term here, states that since Wake County is so big, he is sure that colleges won't stop excepting Wake County graduates. He's probably right--for schools in North Carolina. I'm sure there's no way that NC State or UNC is going to ban all Wake County schools from their campuses, nor will ECU or probably Duke or other colleges in the state. But that understanding of this special situation will fade the further from North Carolina the high school students are looking to roam. Some colleges, especially the highly competitive ones, have an automatic "kick-out" of candidates from non-accredited schools...one way to keep the numbers manageable. Will they go back and make an exception for Wake County students? I don't know, but if I had a child graduating in the next year or so, I wouldn't want to count on it.

Furthermore, there are some programs, loans, internships, and scholarships that have legal requirements that students graduate from accredited schools (sometimes with exceptions for homeschoolers). They don't have any choice about it--Wake County students will not be eligible for those. So, sure, if you have a child who graduates from Wake County, is only interested in going to a North Carolina college, and doesn't need these restricted loans or scholarships, whether the schools are accredited or not probably doesn't make that much difference. But I think there are a lot of North Carolina high schoolers who don't fit into that category.

2. AdvancED is NOT Your Enemy; They Could Even Turn Out to Be Your Best Friend

AdvancED is not reviewing the operation to come in and tell the Board what to do or to tell them how to assign students to schools. AdvancED is supposed to be like a mediator or arbitrator; someone from the outside who can look at the issues with an impartial eye and give a ruling on which side is right. For months now, the NAACP, leading the charge for many other critics, has charged that the Board acted against its own established procedures and agreed to a policy that will lead to racially discriminatory education. The Board responded that they followed the correct procedures and have their arguments about how the new school assignments will benefit all students in the county. The NAACP has one set of statistics backing up their side; the Board has another set backing up their contentions. Whose figures are right? Were procedures followed or not? The latter question, at least, seems like there should be a simple yes or no answer to it. But we have been given no answer, nor even a suggestion of how we are going to achieve such an answer; instead, we have month after month of each side arguing over the same points and making no headway in proving their points.

Enter AdvancED. THAT is their job--to answer that question (among others). If the Board REALLY believes they have followed the appropriate procedures, and they REALLY believe their statistics are more valid than the ones of their critics, they should welcome AdvancED to come and tell the public, The Board is right, they did things properly, and their figures are appropriate. If AdvancED backed up their decision, that would take a lot of the wind out of the sails of the critics. Maybe we could even move on and get something accomplished. However, as I stated in an earlier post, this is not the first time that the Board majority acts like people outside their own ranks are out to get them.

3. Guess What? You're Going to Have to Answer those Questions Even If You Drop Your Accreditation

Let us not forget that this fight with AdvancED is not the only regulatory problem the Board has on their plate. The U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights has not just one, but TWO, investigations of Wake County pending--one for racial discrimination, another for sexual discrimination (in interscholastic sports). And while you can chose to drop your accreditation rather than answer those pesky questions from AdvancED, you can't just opt out of a Civil Right discrimination suit brought by the US government....a suit that will be bound to ask all those same questions and MORE.

This is where Secretary Duncan's letter is so significant. As I've said before, I grew up in the Washington DC area, so I am fluent in DC-ese. Therefore, allow me to translate this letter. This letter is a warning to Wake County not to try to blow off and bluster through these discrimination complaints. There is NO WAY Secretary Duncan would mention Wake County in that context without someone in his office having checked into the case and decided that there were legitimate reasons for concern that the system was racially discriminating.

So the Board can stick their heads in the sand if they want and force AdvancED to leave--at the expense of Wake County graduates. But you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be at least an investigation, if not a lawsuit, coming from the federal Office of Civil Rights. And refusing to cooperate with AdvancED will make the suits in DC even more suspicious that there is something rotten in the county of Wake.

The best thing the Board could do for the schools, the public, and particularly for ITSELF is to get out of its own way and cooperate with AdvancED. But will it? As my Magic 8 Ball says, "Cannot predict now."

PS--

On a happier and less complicated note--today is my son's 12th birthday! Happy Birthday to Him! But it makes me kind of sad to think that this is the last year before he turns into a teenager...

Lawyer Tells Wake County School Board to Stop Texting During Meetings

Last week, the attorney for the Wake County School Board officially advised them to stop texting during board meetings.  Board Attorney Ann Majestic, who researched the issue on the request of the school board chair, Ron Margiotta, recommended against board members texting or sending instant messages or emails during the public meetings.  Majestic's legal reasoning is that the meetings are supposed to give the public an insight into the board's deliberations.  However, if members are sending private messages to each other during the course of the meeting, the public is obviously not getting access to all the board's thinking and communications.

Personally, I am completely behind this opinion, both because I think the sunshine laws require that board communication in public meetings should be available to the public, but also because it is a pet peeve of mine to see public official texting and tweeting and such during official hearings and events.  It drives me crazy to watch public occasions, such as the State of the Union address, and see our national representatives not paying attention to the President because they are too busy typing away on their Blackberries.

But I think it is especially important in this case because it send a message to the students.  When the public or other board members are addressing the body, I think it is rude for other board members to be texting instead of listening.  I believe they should be paying complete attention to the limited amount of time that the public has to express its opinions.  I also believe students should be paying complete attention to the limited time that the teacher has to teach, rather than texting and e-chatting.  In my experience, this is a rising problem in high schools, and teachers differ about how to deal with them.  Certainly, sometimes students are using their cell phones or laptops to access relevant material, and that is to be encouraged.  But the best way to make sure they are doing that, rather than chatting with their friends, is to set a policy that it is not appropriate to be carrying on private or off-topic discussions with friends during class, whether that is by voice, by written note, or by electronic communication.

I think the school board should set a good example for the students by refraining from electronic communications during board meetings, regardless of the legal issues about open meetings and sunshine legislation.  It is one way they can support teachers in the classrooms (even homeschool ones) without spending any money, building any facilities, or reassigning any students.