Scores soften Wake's boast

Educators attest to schools' quality

RALEIGH -- New test results are making it harder for Wake County school leaders to continue to claim that they have one of the best school systems in the nation.

Results show that 70.8 percent of Wake's elementary and middle school students are passing tougher new state exams, compared with 90.4 percent three years ago. It was those higher scores that earned Wake national recognition for its academic efforts, especially its diversity policy.

Supporters stress that Wake still outperforms the state average. But the eye-popping scores that drew national attention, including a front-page Sunday article in The New York Times, are gone -- at least for now.

"The scores are disappointing," said school board member Patti Head. "But I still think we have one of the best school systems in the nation."

Wake's reputation received a boost in 2005 following the New York Times article, which linked the district's academic success with efforts to reduce the poverty levels at individual schools.

Wake has a goal of trying to limit schools to less than 40 percent of their students receiving subsidized lunches, which is a measure of poverty.

But Wake's passing rate began to dip after the state toughened the math end-of-grade exams in 2006. The rate dropped even further this year when the reading exams were changed.

State education officials toughened the exams after years of complaints that the existing tests were too easy and inflated the academic proficiency of students.

The state "kept the same standards for 10 years and Wake and other school districts rode the wave for a long time," said Terry Stoops, an education policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation, a group critical of the state's testing program. "Now we're seeing more realistic results."

The drop has been especially noticeable in some schools. In 2005, Wake had 61 Schools of Excellence, meaning students met academic growth goals and at least 90 percent of students passed state exams. Wake has four of those schools this year.

In 2005, Bugg Elementary had a passing rate of 90 percent. Now it's 59.6 percent, but PTA president Bill Scanlon said the change doesn't worry him.

"We wouldn't be going to this school if we were concerned about the academics," said Scanlon, who has a fourth-grader at Bugg.

Just because the passing rates have dropped doesn't mean that Wake's diversity efforts aren't valid, according to Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow with the Century Foundation. Kahlenberg has been a big proponent of Wake's diversity policy.

Kahlenberg said Wake's performance needs to be compared with the statewide average and with that of other school districts with similar demographics.

Wake still largely outscores the state average and the state's other large districts, including the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system. In addition to having a higher average passing rate, Wake had 40 fewer schools where less than half their students passed state exams than Mecklenburg.

Unlike Wake, Charlotte has abandoned diversity efforts in favor of neighborhood schools. This has led to many more higher poverty schools with lower passing rates.

"It's not like the level of learning has dropped 20 points overnight," Kahlenberg said. "It's that the scale has changed."

Wake school officials say they can replicate the success they had when they set a goal in 1998 of having 95 percent of third- and eighth-graders passing state exams by 2003. While Wake fell short of that goal, the passing rate increased from 81.9 percent to 91.3 percent over that time.

"The scores tell us we need to redouble our efforts," said Kevin Hill, vice chairman of the school board. "They've changed the definition of success. I have no doubt our kids will bounce back."

Stoops concedes that Wake is still a good system, acknowledging how the district's graduation rate and average SAT score are both higher than the state average.

"Wake is a good system, but not the best school system in the nation," Stoops said.