Wake County Protesters-You've Picked the Wrong Battle

Two days ago, a member of the NAACP and 3 community supporters were arrested at a school board meeting in Wake County for taking more than their allotted time during a peaceful protest. While I appreciate their efforts, I believe there's something bigger that they need to be protesting!

I'm not sure if you've been paying attention, but the Wake County Board of Education is making national headlines. For those that don't know, the Wake school board has voted to end its busing policy which attempts to integrate and diversify schools using income. No school should have more than 40% with free or reduced lunch (even though there are a few schools which are out of compliance).

I believe in the need for diversity (even though I’m not a fan of Brown vs. Board or its implementation): economic, political, racial, religious, etc. But in reference to our current educational status, I feel the most pressing issue is quality of education, not diversity. Regardless of where the students attend school and who is sitting next to them, the students deserve an equal opportunity to receive a sound basic education.

For the record, look at Wake’s high schools’ current EOC scores (click on a high school, look to the right hand column, click on 2008-2009 NC School Report Cards, click on High Student Performance tab, and scroll down to Performance of Each Student Group on the ABCs End-of-Course Tests). There is a huge gap in performance between white students and minorities at almost every high school. Now, there has been growth over the past few years, but there is still a sizeable difference in performance (I don’t believe that test scores are the end-all-be-all to student performance, but I’ll use this data for the sake of making my argument). These numbers come after 10 years of this busing policy.

With the current busing system, something I’d like to know is what percentage of minority students are enrolled in the honors, AP/IB courses? Once students enter these somewhat diverse schools, how diverse are the classrooms? How diverse is the selection of authors and books chosen to be read? How diverse are the teaching methods used to deliver instruction?

While voting to end the diversity policy in favor of having community based, racially homogenized schools is blatantly racist to me (which is why I believe we didn’t get the race to the top funding), the bigger issue is this: Are our students learning regardless of where they attend?

So, I challenge the NAACP president, William Barber, along with all of the community supporters, to turn their attention to the numbers, to the curriculum, to the quality of education our students are receiving. Get arrested because the minority students aren’t learning like their white counterparts.