RALEIGH -- Wake County school officials have provided no studies or data to an accrediting agency to justify the elimination of the diversity policy in favor of the move to community-based schools.
Advancing Excellence in Education Worldwide, or AdvancED, had requested all information and studies used by the school board majority to adopt the new student assignment policy and to support its belief it would improve the high schools accredited by the group. The group asked for student performance data, financial impact studies, transition plan impact studies and specific case studies.
But the response the Georgia-based organization received on Friday from Wake provided a four-paragraph answer on the assignment policy question with no accompanying studies or documents.
"There is no one set of information considered by board members in deciding to shift to a community-based plan - the information varies by the members who voted in favor of the change," according to the letter to AdvancED by interim Superintendent Donna Hargens.
School board member John Tedesco, head of the committee drawing up the new assignment plan, said the board has student performance data but couldn't get it to AdvancED by Friday's deadline. He conceded that the board didn't have any financial data on the cost of the new plan. He said the board needs to know more about how it will operate the new model to have cost data.
"It's too premature for us to know the financial impact," Tedesco said Friday.
But the lack of documentation is indicative of the majority not having the justification to change the policy, according to board member Keith Sutton, a member of the minority faction.
"If you have a $1.2 billion organization, you would not go with a completely different plan without a business case," Sutton said. "You wouldn't go into this blindly."
Jennifer Oliver, a spokeswoman for AdvancED, said the group has not yet begun reviewing the information from Wake.
AdvancED is conducting a wide-ranging review of nearly all of the major decisions made by the new school board majority since December. Mark Elgart, the president and CEO of AdvancED, has said these kinds of reviews are rare.
AdvancED is acting on a complaint the state NAACP filed in March. The NAACP has also filed a federal civil rights complaint accusing the school system of racial discrimination for changing the student assignment policy.
AdvancED requested a lengthy list of documents on issues such as changing the assignment policy, the hiring of attorney Thomas Farr, the decision not to build Forest Ridge High School and how tickets are distributed for seats at school board meetings. The organization also plans to send a review team to Raleigh, but the date hasn't been set.
Members of the board majority had questioned giving all the documents, contending AdvancED was going beyond the scope of its authority to accredit Wake's high schools.
AdvancED had threatened to remove accreditation if it didn't get the documentation by Friday. After a hastily called special board meeting last week, school leaders agreed to provide the records.
This week's response from Hargens notes that four members of the board majority were elected in campaigns last fall in which "changing the student assignment plan was a core issue." She also said that public dissatisfaction with the prior assignment plan influenced some board members while personal experiences of board members who are parents or grandparents of students in Wake was also a factor in the decision-making process.
"We can supply them facts and figures for what they want," school board chairman Ron Margiotta said on Friday. "But we're still questioning their authority to do this."
Margiotta pointed to the low test scores and graduation rates for poor and minority children under the old diversity policy.
Tedesco added that there are no studies proving the old socio-economic diversity policy helped low-income Wake students succeed academically.
But Sutton, the board member, said there is no indication the new policy will do any better. "I don't think that's enough to justify revamping an entire assignment plan," said Sutton, the board member. "That's not what should be done to address performance of African-American and economically disadvantaged students."
