WCPSS - SAS Report Bombshell

[JoeCiulla]

Back in June, SAS issued a report which was highly critical of WCPSS. Specifically, the report says that WCPSS is over-stating the academic performance results of Economically-Disadvantaged students. Worse, the report states that WCPSS is discriminating against these children by setting lower expectations, and by not promoting them to higher-level math classes when they were qualified.

Follow this link to the WakeEd blog, Keung has the report posted in three parts:
http://blogs.newsobserver.com/wakeed/sas-and-wakes-achievement-gap#new

Here's the scandal part. Del Burns and Tom Oxholm had this report in June, and have been suppressing it ever since. When two school board members heard about the report's existence, they pushed to obtain copies. The board members were Ron Margiotta and Eleanor Goettee. Last Friday, Del Burns released the report. But it turns out he only release part of the report, omitting the first two pages (which happened to contain the strongest criticism of WCPSS reporting and promotion rates). When the omission was brought to Mr. Burns' attention by a media member, he stated that an error had been made, and he re-released the full report [Note: the omitted pages were pages 1 and 2].

I encourage everyone to read the report, question why it was suppressed, and question why the school administration conveniently forgot to release the most critical two pages.

[kellyc]

THis is very concerning. I have already voted, but the report confirmed to me that I made the right choice.

[dhyatt]

Suppression of this report may result in legal action against WCPSS, specifically Burns & Oxholm. Here is a copy of the entire report, including the first two pages that were "accidently" left out. At about 23 MB in size, it will take 2-3 minutes to download for most people.

http://carypolitics.org/dmdocuments/SAS_EVAAS_Report.pdf

The original report was almost certainly delivered in PDF form which means that someone had to open the pdf and then save a new copy starting with page 3 before making it available. It's almost inconceivable that it was somehow done by accident.

[chaboard]

Back in June, SAS issued a report which was highly critical of WCPSS. Specifically, the report says that WCPSS is over-stating the academic performance results of Economically-Disadvantaged students. Worse, the report states that WCPSS is discriminating against these children by setting lower expectations, and by not promoting them to higher-level math classes when they were qualified.

Follow this link to the WakeEd blog, Keung has the report posted in three parts:
http://blogs.newsobserver.com/wakeed/sas-and-wakes-achievement-gap#new




I understand that you want to emphasize both the scandal aspect and the criticism aspect - and there are legitimate concerns there. But let's ALSO point out that the SAS report *confirms* the underlying axiom of the diversity policy - namely that poor kids do worse as the percentage of them in a school goes up. Which means those pushing for "community schools" are fighting AGAINST the position supported by the evidence in this SAS report.

Carry on.