Congratulations on your victory and thank you for your willingness to serve on the WCPSS Board of Education. We look to each of you to set policies that fulfill the promise of a high-quality education for ALL children, regardless of race or class or language ability. Educating all of our children to high standards is, however, a collective responsibility that requires support and engagement from parents, neighbors, business owners, community leaders, administrators, teachers and students. WakeCARES encourages all of these groups to partner to support and respect the ideas and decisions of the newly elected board members in their efforts to improve on those initiatives that are working within the WCPSS as well as their efforts to bring innovative solutions to those things which are not. We look forward to a culture that connects the community to the public school system and gives all families an opportunity to be a part of the decisions and the process, provides stability, increases expectations and opportunities for all students, and offers greater accountability and transparency.

Chris, Deborah, Debra and John, you have promised positive change and you have sparked the hope and enthusiasm of those who have supported you.

The following is taken from the summary of a SAS EVAAS report to WCPSS on June 29. This information was withheld until Friday, October 2. This validates our concern that while making the schools in the system look “Healthy”, current policies are failing many students.

Because the WCPSS E&R (Evaluation & Research) analyses include two adjustments for students’ socio-economic status, these key systematic differences are hidden in the results of the E&R analysis. The WCPSS E&R analyses ‘expects’ students who are poor to score lower at the end of the year than more affluent students, even when individual students from a lower ses(socio-economic status)group start the school year at the very same achievement as more advantaged students, it ‘forgives’ the school serving the poorer students because of the demographic makeup of the school, thereby removing any opportunity that the students results will signal educators that something is amiss. Thus, it is most difficult to identify ad correct the situations that contribute to the student inequity.

…Policy makers should be alerted to these important differences, not have them hidden.

To read the reports in their entirety visit http://blogs.newsobserver.com/wakeed/sas-and-wakes-achievement-gap