NAACP Welcomes New School Board and New Opportunity for Progress

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

December 6, 2011

For More Information:           Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President, 919-394-8137

                                                Mrs. Amina Turner, Executive Director, 919-682-4700

                                                Atty. Jennifer Marsh, Legal Redress Coordinator, 919-682-4700

NAACP WELCOMES NEW SCHOOL BOARD AND  

NEW OPPORTUNITY FOR PROGRESS

(DURHAM) - When the newly elected Wake County School Board meets for the first time this afternoon, they will have new tools and encouragement from the federal government regarding their ability to consider race and socio-economic status in preventing high-poverty, racially-identifiable schools, which research has proven has a negative impact on resources and student achievement.

The US Departments of Education and Justice issued a historic letter last week that replaced a Bush-era resegregationist position on diversity in school assignment policies and affirmed what the North Carolina NAACP has argued all along: Local school boards have the constitutional and legal right to ensure diverse education for all children. Indeed, based on research and the lessons from history, they must do so if they want to provide a constitutional, high quality and well-funded public education for all students. Here is an excerpt from the letter:

The United States Department of Education (ED) and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) (collectively, the Departments) are issuing this guidance to explain how, consistent with existing law, elementary and secondary schools can voluntarily consider race to further compelling interests in achieving diversity and avoiding racial isolation.

...Providing students with diverse, inclusive educational opportunities from an early age is crucial to achieving the nation's educational and civic goals...Conversely, where schools lack a diverse student body or are racially isolated (i.e., are composed overwhelmingly of students of one race), they may fail to provide the full panoply of benefits that K-12 schools can offer. The academic achievement of students at racially isolated schools often lags behind that of their peers at more diverse schools.  Racially isolated schools often have fewer effective teachers, higher teacher turnover rates, less rigorous curricular resources (e.g., college preparatory courses), and inferior facilities and other educational resources.  Reducing racial isolation in schools is also important because students who are not exposed to racial diversity in school often lack other opportunities to interact with students from different racial backgrounds. For all these reasons, the Departments recognize, as has a majority of Justices on the Supreme Court, the compelling interests that K-12 schools have in obtaining the benefits that flow from achieving a diverse student body and avoiding racial isolation.

The full document can be accessed here: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/December/11-ag-1569.html

The NAACP's position has remained consistent regardless of who is on the school board.

1.       Any new plan that is implemented needs to surpass the nationally recognized and researched Gold Standard plan that existed prior to 2010. For any new student assignment plan to be successful there should be an analysis based on metrics, data and research that shows empirically why what is being implemented is better than the previous diversity based socio-economic plan that had proven results for student achievement. We have always said that any plan, from time to time, needs to be tweaked to meet ongoing challenges such as the growth of the school system. (For more information, please refer to "Hope and Despair in the American City: Why There are No Bad Schools in Raleigh" by Gerald Grant.)

2.       The NAACP has consistently maintained that research, the law and the lessons of history all tell us that diversity and resources are key and undeniable components of any student assignment plan that is attempting to promote student achievement. The former majority dismissed this research for their own narrow political ideology. They attempted to distort the record and characterize diversity as a cause for failure and present neighborhood schools and proximity as the only solutions. We know this is simply not the truth. Superintendent Tata, in our meetings, has admitted that certain diversity standards had to be in place within the framework of his new plan. By removing diversity from the official policy, his staff was disallowed from factoring it in.

3.       The NAACP has consistently advocated for a comprehensive agenda to promote student achievement and guarantee all children a constitutional, high quality, well-funded, diverse education. The NAACP is guided by eight fundamental principles for healthy schools and strong public education:

• Stop resegregation and promote diversity
• Provide equity in funding for all schools
• Provide high quality teachers and smaller classrooms
• Provide high quality leadership teams
• Provide high quality facilities
• Focus on math, science, reading and history
• Support parental and community involvement
• Address unjust and disproportionate suspensions and reduce dropout rates and increase graduation rates among African-American students

4.       We continue to have the same questions about Superintendent Tata's new student assignment plan that we raised with him when we met with him on July 7, 2011. We are still waiting for his answers to these questions and concerns:    

1. The percentage goals of minority, poor and low-performing students in each school have not been clarified.

2. The seat availability for parents who choose to send their students to magnet and so called "achievement choice" schools is not clear.

3. We do not know how the school systems plans to address the issue of access for parents who may not have access to the necessary resources to wade through the online process to make choices for their children's school assignment.

4. There is still no urban school district operating a so-called "choice" plan that has maintained greater success than the socio-economic diversity and Healthy Schools assignment plan that irrefutably made Wake County a national model for student achievement.

5. There is still no data or grid to show how the current recommended plan will decrease or increase the number of racially-identifiable, high-poverty schools in Wake County.

6. There is still no analysis that truly shows that the partial plans presented thus far are empirically better than the socio-economic diversity/Healthy Schools assignment plan.

7. It is still not clear whether the Wake County School System administration recognizes and understands that the high-poverty schools that came to be under the old plan were not a result of the plan but rather a result of unprecedented growth in numbers of students in Wake County.

The new majority seems to be willing to review and analyze the current plan. We hope that they will be use the standards of research, the law and lessons of history as opposed to a narrow-minded, regressive, political ideology that undermines public education rather than uplifting public education.

On November 8, after the election of the current school board majority, the NC NAACP released the following statement:

"Once again, Blacks, Whites, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, old and young, rich and poor, Republicans and Democrats have all said, "We want to go forward and not backwards." It is our great hope that after these elections, the single focus of Wake County School Board is to set an example not only for North Carolina but for the nation that all children deserve a high quality, constitutional, well-funded and diverse public education."

We remain hopeful and optimistic for the new direction of the new Wake County School Board.

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