Thursday, October 8, 2009
Truitt versus Tedesco: It matters.
The question of the hour is, does Cathy Truitt have a chance against John Tedesco in the District 2 Wake school board runoff? Because if she doesn't, if it's a lock for Tedesco, then there may be no stopping the Republican right from rolling their wrecking ball over 30 years worth of successful school policies.
Which is not to say that the current school board did everything well, and in fact a lot of progressives (I'll include myself) are just waking up to the fact that the board's response to complaints from the suburbs -- and the school administration's response -- was less than adept. Or put it this way: When you lose an election this badly, mistakes were made.
But now the issue is whether the new school board, controlled by conservative Republicans, will be careful with the system it's conquered or put a rope around its neck and drop the floor.
All year the conservatives demanded that Wake's school leaders to do a serious study of how well or badly their policies were working, especially for kids from low-income families. Didn't happen. Now that they're in, will the conservatives follow their own advice? Or dump the policies -- diversity, magnet schools, year-round schools -- at the first opportunity and study the consequences later?
The answer to that question isn't clear, but there's a lot of evidence that the new board will strike hard and fast if it can -- and if Tedesco wins, he's their decisive fifth vote. Truitt has sent mixed signals about busing and diversity -- she's for diversity, but not for busing, or anyway not forced busing -- but the thread that runs through her comments is that she won't act precipitously, recklessly.
She's an educator, after all, and she believes in the value of study and in checking your biases against the data as you go along.
So this is what I've been hearing today, in a string off-the-record conversations. Truitt is reaching out to moderates and progressives, and they are reaching out to her. She's in a very uphill fight against a political machine that's been on the ground for months and has heavy financial backing thanks to conservative Republicans like Paul Coble and Art Pope. But moderates in the Republican party are getting behind her and Democrats are thinking about it.
They'd better not think too long. The runoff campaign is NOW, and election day is November 3.
Truitt needs money and troops and she needs them immediately to have even a long-shot chance. I don't have a grasp of the numbers in this race, but the fact that Garner and Fuquay-Varina are holding municipal elections on November means a lot of folks who didn't vote the first time for school board will be voting the second time. Yes, Tedesco beat Truitt by 2-to-1 on Tuesday; but Horace Tart got almost as many votes as Truitt, and most of Tart's supporters -- assuming they come out again -- should move to Truitt's column, especially if Tart endorses her.
Viewed in this light, the front-page headline and photo of Truitt in the N&O this morning was exactly what the Truitt campaign needed -- for two reasons.
First, that "Forced busing is dead" language put Truitt squarely on the side of the critics while (implicitly) conveying the idea that there's more than one kind of busing. Most kids ride buses, and the only thing "forced" about it is that they're required to be in school until age 16.
Second, the giant story suggests that the N&O may now be struck by the realization that the hundreds (thousands?) of anti-Wake school system stories it's carried over the last many years, quoting every critic at length about the negative impact of reassignments on [insert name of child and neighborhood name here], just possibly was a bit of overkill? [Speaking of studies, there's one to be done -- the impact of the N&O's coverage on public perceptions of the school system's performance.]
Anyway, if the media -- and the N&O in particular -- will pay close attention to the debate over making change with care vs. making change with a vengeance, Truitt's chances improve geometrically.
Comments (11)
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Wake Parent’s assertion that Magnet schools are “two schools within a school” is partially true. My observation was that our K-5 magnet school was unified. The two student populations began to diverge in middle school. And in high school, the two student populations were totally separate.
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Unfortunately, the numbers don't lie. There is a lot of hysteria being created right now about a new school board eliminating magnets. None of them are talking about doing that. But the fact is that the achievement gap in most magnet schools is as bad as it is for non-magnet schools. This is made worse by our school system's bias against low-income students (see the SAS EVAAS report). The promotion to 8th grade algebra for these students is much lower than the rate for equally-perfoming middle class white students.
Wake Parent's assertion that Magnet schools are "two schools within a school" is untrue. We attend a magnet with a low income base, and it is only one school. It's wonderful! Any student that falls behind (no matter what their social status) isn't called out in class, they attend electives that help them catch up. And every student regardless of income can take orchestra, band, or piano. We need more magnets, not less, in Wake County.
Bob, None of the elected "transformation" candidates are advocating any changes to the magnet program. Many people are invested in magnets, either for the curriculum or the stability. But, understand that magnet schools do nothing to improve the performance of economically-disadvantaged children. These schools operate as two schools within a school, with no curricular or social interaction between the "base" and "option" populations. Cathy Truitt acknowledged this in a WPTF interview, and agreed that magnet schools do nothing to help ED student achievement. Now she is saying that lots of magnets in Garner is her platform. This woman is simply saying whatever she thinks it takes to get elected, and she does not hesitate to change platforms based on the direction that the winds are blowing. She is financed by a small group of Garner power brokers, and no doubt has promised them that if she is elected she will do their bidding, the rest of the county be damned. If you have met John Tedesco, then you must know that he is sincere. I don't think you should support this woman as the last hope of maintaining status quo, because she is only beholden to her Garner financiers and her own ego.
To both Wake Parents who are writing (or so I surmise from the differing email addresses): First, thanks for your comments. If this were simply a case of different weighting of the diversity and neighborhood factors -- and if it turns out that the new school board assigns reasonable weights without tossing diversity out completely -- then I'm simply mistaken. But I take the position of the new majority to be that diversity should be given no weight in assignments, and should be maintained only by the use of magnet schools -- with the magnet system likely to be overhauled in a way that will hurt, not help, diversity outcomes -- and by extra funding to schools in low-income neighborhoods that I doubt will ever actually materialize. (In Charlotte's case, the extra $$$ were there for awhile, but it's my understanding that they've dried up with the recession and budget cuts.) No busing for diversity, after all, has been the Republican position for years, and despite the fact that a lot of the WSCA parents don't subscribe to it, it sure looks to me like the Republicans -- the ones on the school board and the ones who are county commissioners -- are now in full command of the Wake schools. Again, I could be mistaken, because I'm seeing this through a political lens (which is always murky) and maybe this isn't going to be about politics at all. We'll see. I can't respond in any intelligent way to the comments about EVASS and the SAS report, because I'm only dimly aware of the first and haven't read the second. I know about the SAS report only that its authors are surprised to see it being discussed in connection with the diversity issue, but that doesn't mean it's not relevant, or that it is, for that matter. I simply don't know. One of you said it was opportunism on the part of the system's defenders to now be calling for a study when they/we weren't doing so prior to the elections. Yes, it is; you're right. But as you also said, a study can't hurt and may help. I appreciate the feedback -- thanks again.
Bob, Sure a study is needed. It would be a good first step to run WCPSS student performance data through EVAAS and compare the value-add scores of students reassigned for diversity versus students not reassigned. This could easily be done. This would help give us some answers as to whether it is working. It sure seems like opportunism, though, that now that the diversity policy has been defeated at the ballot box you are pushing for a study where before status quo supporters rejected the idea. I don't have a problem with schools with large numbers of low-income students (let's keep race out of it, since busing for racial diversity is illegal) if those schools are doing a good job educating the low income students in those schools. We need to be comparing apples-to-apples and not looking at overall school scores. We need to look at the children within the schools and see whether low income students are performing similar to low income students elsewhere in WCPSS and the state. This being said, I don't think even the "neighborhood schools" board members will "not consider [diversity] at all in the assignment process." For parents, the issue has been that diversity seems to trump all other concerns in the assignment process including stability and what parents believe is best for their children. There are many, many examples of this we have heard from all over the county. The way policy 6200 is written, there are 6 factors Growth & Planning must consider in student assignment, but those factors are not given any weight or preference. It may turn out that the "neighborhood schools" board members simply want to weight the distance and stability of assignment criteria slightly more than the other 4. The computer software used by Growth & Planning supports weighting these factors already. Let's get started on fixing the real problems in Wake County identified in the SAS report: large academic achievement gaps, low placement rates for proficient students in advanced classes and racial biases in placement in advanced classes. 10 years under the current policy has done nothing to help fix these real problems.
No one really knows what Truitt is for. But I see nothing in the elected candidates which makes me think they are going to recklessly start making changes. Each has spoken about how we need to proceed with caution, sensitivity and logic. I understand that you can't be all places at one time, so you may not have heard these comments. While you don't agree with the candidates' platforms, I hope you do recognize that they have been methodical and consistent from day one. I don't believe that Ms. Truitt's background indicates she is any more likely to be deliberate in her decision-making process. Frankly, watching her campaign, she seems to have had no problem making snap decisions in changing her platform. She ran ads in which she labeled herself as not status quo, but now is trying to appeal to that group. To me, her campaign has demonstrated her to be reactionary and divisive, certainly not deliberate and thoughtful.
Whether diversity is a failed policy is far from being a settled question -- in fact, diversity's critics were calling for a serious study of its effects until they won the election; is study no longer needed? Nonetheless, I agree that the diversity ship sank with the results. The issue now is whether change will come gradually and carefully, or precipitously, without considering the consequences for low-income neighborhoods. If a "neighborhood schools" policy leaves some neighborhoods with segregated schools (racially segregated and/or with overwhelming numbers of low-income kids), is that acceptable? Assignment policies can be changed so there's greater emphasis on close-to-home assignments while avoiding as much as possible a resegregation effect. Or, alternatively, the resegregation effect can be ignored in a rush to assign every student to the closest school. That's the choice as I see it. Neither Tedesco nor Truitt is in favor of a diversity-first policy. They do seem to differ, however, on whether to consider it at all in the assignment process.
The N&O ran a battery of articles before the election, most of which cried that armageddon would arrive if the status quo prevailed. They also printed some rebuttal editorials from the critics, but the overall bias was strongly in favor of maintaining wcpss policies. Your "newspaper" on the other hand will never let an idea that your editors don't support ever see the light of day. Probably one of the main reasons why the N&O costs 50 cents and you have to give yours away.
Polling shows that the diversity policy is enormously unpopular overall and across all demographic groups, except, narrowly, Democrats. Those opposed outnumber supporters by more than 2-to-1. http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2009/10/school-board-polling.html This election wasn't just about "complaints from the suburbs" or "conservative Republicans." It was about a failed policy that voters soundly rejected. If you think you will help Truitt get elected by endorsing her as the "diversity" candidate, you're going to be in for another defeat on Nov. 3.
What a load of crap! The N&O has rarely published a view that challenged the status quo. To say that they may have assisted in carrying the opposition viewpoint is preposterous. As for Truitt, she's currently proving that she's like every other politician and can be bought. The voters spoke, Tedesco received more than twice the votes she did and it would be nearly impossible for her to win. It seems as though you're asserting that in November, Truitt will benefit from uneducated voters turning out to vote for a councilman and incidently checking her name. If anyone was truly concerned about the Schools, they turned out last Tuesday. To wish for apathetic or ignorant voters to decide something so important is asinine.
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