Can Wake County Public School officials demonstrate whether the board’s diversity policy is actually helping students? Ron Margiotta and Horace Tart, two Wake County School Board members asked that question earlier this week at Tuesday's meeting of the Board's Student Achievement Committee.
Lori Milberg, Chairwoman of the Wake School Board Student Achievement committee, killed Margiotta’s request by reminding David Holdzkom – Assistant Superintendent for Evaluation and Research, who had begun to openly discuss how such a study might look – that a valid diversity study really couldn’t be conducted.
Milberg’s unwillingness to assess the impacts of Wake’s diversity policy speaks volumes. It’s curious how Milberg and other diversity supporters readily accept general studies showing how diversity plans improve test scores of low income students, yet they quash attempts to evaluate their own efforts by saying the study would be too difficult to conduct. If you’re more concerned about saving face than in making sure kids are learning, should you be on the Wake County School Board?
[…] I doubt it will be long before the new members push to delve into the SAS report and whether or not the Wake system is accurately reporting the performance and achievement of low-income kids. Let’s hope Wake taxpayers finally get a real assessment of the busing policy and its impact on kids — something the previous board did not want to do. […]