There's one concept in the Sept. 9 letter from Dan Coleman, president of the Raleigh-Wake Citizens Association, that I can agree with: "All children should expect the same equal access to an extraordinary education." Yes, they should. And if you recognize that there are inequities in our school system now and students who are falling through the cracks, just wait until the Board of Education majority implements a "neighborhood school assignment plan" that exacerbates existing disparities by creating some schools with poverty levels of 69 percent and others with poverty levels of 7 percent.
Volumes of research have shown that student achievement for all students, whether or not they are poor, suffers in schools with high levels of poverty. To close the achievement gap in Wake County, we need to layer additional interventions on top of a school assignment policy that works to support achievement by balancing school populations.
I've heard rumblings I've never heard before about "my school" and "their school" and "maybe we need to consider private school." The board majority purportedly sought to create stability and community, but what we've experienced so far is divisiveness and uncertainty, more questions than answers and a lot of insecurity and anxiety about what's coming next and how those decisions are being made.
