The Daily Howler - 09/27/05

TOO GRAND TO SIT IN THOSE CHAIRS! A letter writer helps us recall what’s at stake in that Times report: // link // print // previous // next //

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2005

TOO GRAND TO SIT IN THOSE CHAIRS: What’s happenin’ in North Carolina’s public schools? Here at THE HOWLER, we don’t have the foggiest. But we got an e-mail from a Chapel Hill reader which we thought was interesting. He too had the impression which was conveyed in Sunday’s New York Times report (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/26/05)—the impression that the Wake County schools have really been rockin’:

E-MAIL (/26/05): Here is an added little tidbit on your piece today. I live in Chapel Hill, which boasts one of the premiere school systems in America. We have two high schools in this town, each with somewhere between 10 and 12 percent black students, I think. We do not need to bus. Kids go to one "great" school or the other because here is where they live. But while this school system has the highest SAT scores by far in the state, and one of the highest nationally, the performance of the black kids in this school system on end-of-grade tests lags way behind Raleigh and the rest of the state. Socioeconomic integration in this case has not worked at all, and has perhaps produced the opposite effect.