Reality Check #1

Myth - The Wake school board helps parents get what they want for their kids - like more community and charter schools and an end to reassignments and busing.

Reality - The Wake school board's policies mean no parent may have a neighborhood school. The school board OPPOSED more community charter schools, and continues busing kids across town.

• The Wake school board VOTED AGAINST more community charter schools (2/06) AFTER saying "yes" to them in 2000.
• School board member Eleanor Goettee: not a "priority" (Cary News, 4/6/06)
• School board member Lori Millberg: not a "top priority" (E-mail to constituent, 2/22/06)
• But even Blue Ribbon Committee and State Board of Education called for more charters (BRC, 7/06; 2005-06 SBE legislative agenda; 6/1/06 meeting)
• 1,000 applied for 100 seats at one Wake charter school this year (Franklin Academy)
• 62-13% (13% no difference; 12% unsure) voters more likely to support candidate who .promises to give parents more choice in education by removing the cap on the number of charter schools. (Civitas, 7/06)
• 65-26% voters support lifting charter cap given cost savings and need for new seats. (John Locke Foundation, 4/06)
• Nearly 10,000 children were forcibly reassigned this school year. Expect another 30,000 in upcoming, MANDATORY year-round transitions.
• Some Raleigh children are bused past FIVE other elementary schools before arriving at their reassigned school every morning.
• In the MANDATORY year-round transition plans, the school board ranks .availability of alternatives for families. LAST among considerations. (WCPSS, http://www.wcpss.net/growth/downloads/final_conversion_criteria71806.pdf)
• Parents are tired of reassignments and forced busing - dangerous, bad for kids, expensive.
• Parents need hundreds of choices not thousands of reassignments.

Reality Check #2

Myth - The Wake school board's big schools are the smartest way to accommodate for new students.

Reality - Wake's big schools are expensive, but not better! Excellent, cost-effective community charter schools would give parents options and accommodate for new students.

• There is NO connection between big schools and better learning. ("Wake County's Edifice Complex: Extravagant School Buildings Do Not Lead to Higher Student Achievement," John Locke Foundation, 8/9/06)
• Wake County spends more than other counties:
  • $60 million for high school
  • $20 million for elementary school
  • $13 million to clear one parcel (average 25 acres)
  
• Wake spent $79 million renovating four schools (Bugg, Lacy, Poe, and Root) for only 37 new seats!
• Including land, four brick buildings, two campuses, Franklin Academy community charter school: $9 million
• Wake Superintendent Del Burns: "Nine million builds half an elementary school for us." (News & Observer, 3/30/06)
• School board member Lori Millberg: "The ability of Franklin Academy to put up a building is not something that WCPSS can simply learn." (E-mail to constituent, 2/19/06)
• Wake standard public school per pupil expense (2004-05):
    $2,320.12 (operating expense)
    $1,400.73 (5-year capital average)
  = $3,720.85
  (NC DPI)
  
• Franklin Academy charter school per pupil expense (2004-05):
  = $1,648.23 (plus ZERO for capital)
  (Franklin Academy independent audit)
  
• The Wake school system bases budget demands on inflated enrollment numbers - not "average daily membership" numbers (which the DPI says is "a more accurate count of the number of students in school than enrollment.")
• The Wake school system has been growing at modest rates of 3-5% since 1998. (Average Daily Membership, NC DPI)
• In one year (1998-99), Wake charters took in 27% of new students entering the system. (NC DPI)

Reality Check #3

Myth - Wake County schools are excellent.

Reality - Wake County's scores are based on SUBJECTIVE, self-produced, self-administered, and self-graded North Carolina End-of-Grade tests.

• Standards are obscenely low.
• NC End-of-Grade 3rd-grade math test:
  35% correct answers = proficient
  50% correct answers = advanced
  
• Compare results of NC End-of-Grade with objective, nationally-standardized Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) test in 1999:

  	NC End-of-Grade	ITBS
  8th-graders at or above grade level	78%	46%
  5th-graders at or above grade level	77%	44%

• NC eliminated objective, nationally recognized ITBS in 2001!
• Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), 41 Wake schools failed this year. ("Early Wake test results are in: 75 of 116 elementary and middle schools meet federal standards in reading," News & Observer, 7/22/06)
• Only 7% of voters think Wake schools are "excellent" (35% good; 37% fair; 10% poor; 11% not sure) (News & Observer/WRAL/Research 2000 poll, 5/10-11/06)
• States use varying methods to calculate graduation rates - some of which are "misleading." (EPE Research Center/Education Week magazine) State-reported rates are usually much higher than those produced through nationally standardized methods (like Cumulative Promotion Index or Common Core of Data).
• North Carolina is among states that have set graduation rate goals that are LOWER than their reported graduation rates for 2002-03. ("Getting Honest About Grad Rates: How States Play the Numbers and Students Lose," The Education Trust, June 2005)
• "The Wake County public schools disproportionately enroll White, non-Hispanic students in Gifted/Talented programs and disproportionately classify Black students as Mentally Retarded by well over twice their representation in enrollments. Black students are given out-of-school suspensions at much higher rates than would be expected from their share in total enrollments. Black students are classified under Emotional Disturbance at much higher rates than would be expected from their share in total enrollments." (Schott Report, 2006)

Reality Check #4

Myth - The Wake school board is careful with taxpayers' money.

Reality - The Wake school bureaucracy keeps growing, and it has a voracious appetite.

• 25% ($224,822,674) of total school budget goes to bureaucrats (WCPSS organizational chart)
• The bureaucrat-to-student ratio is high and increasing (DPI)
• 13,974 employees (of which 7,452 are teachers); 1,280 in central administration staff (.Basic Facts,. WCPSS, http://www.wcpss.net/basic_facts.html)
• Those resources need to go to the classroom!
• The school board just spent $400,000 on an audit which said everything was okay - despite the transportation department and cafeteria money scandals which took place under the watch of new superintendent Del Burns.
• The school board chose Burns as superintendent - despite warnings by the PTA, Wake Ed Partnership, and parents.
• Burns' STARTING salary is $280,000 a year.
• Parents still have to kick in paper towels and Kleenex at school.

Francis X. De Luca, State Director
Americans for Prosperity and AFP Foundation - North Carolina