“Seeking Integration, Whatever the Path” by Michael Winerip
New York Times, February 27, 2011
Topic: Integration in the Wake County Public School System in North Carolina.
Summary: This school district has long been known for integration. Originally, this meant racial integration. After that was outlawed, the district went to integration based on socio-economics. Now there is a proposal from community leaders in the Chamber of Commerce to integrate schools based on achievement.
Intended audience: General public
Key Points:
- After race-based integration was outlawed in 2000, Wake County adopted socioeconomic integration.
- The integration plan was dismantled in 2009.
- New proposal (Mid-February 2011) suggests achievement based integration with a “70-30 mix – 70 percent of students who have scored proficient on state tests and 30 percent who are below grade level.”
- All the schools will be academically successful – Hurrah!
- Ultimately, the decision is up to the board; however, it has been received favorably by conservative and liberal members of the nine person board.
Relevance: This article was really interesting to me – what an innovative way to look at school integration! The article touches on issues of diversity that we have discussed student achievement, race, socioeconomics, and politics. I am interested to see how this idea plays out.
Note - Here is the clip from the Colbert Report mentioned in this article about the Wake County Schools issue:
i had never heard of this county and will be curious to see what the board decides...you gotta love the colbert report for putting things in perspective :0)
ReplyDeleteWow what a very interesting article indeed. I too am curious to see how this will all turn out. I wonder how they considered student's needs of transportation when deciding these integration methods. For example, the socio-economic integration, those students that are poor and had to go to a certain school to meet the integration needs, did they have a way to get to school? Did the school provide transportation if they didn't? I would assume that if the district is so focused on integration, they would think of these things. Achievement based integration seems like such a weird thing to try and administer. I feel like there would have to be at least one school where it wouldn't balance out, where there would be more high achievement or more low achievement. Very curious indeed.
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