Educational Diversity

For a state with such a long and dark history of racial oppression, North Carolina, and particularly Wake County, has been the shining example of educational diversity for over thirty years.  The 1976 diversity policy, coupled with the county-wide merger of various school districts, has been touted nationally as one of the most progressive and effective racial integration policies in the nation.  And with the addition of a robust magnet school implementation and enhanced socio-economic data collection and analysis, the original policy has been further calibrated and improved over the years to take into account factors other than race into the integration formula.  The result was the envy of many urban school systems and education policy researchers.

However, in response to some of the flaws in the system, the Wake County Board of Education decided earlier this year to completely eliminate the diversity policy in favor of a yet-to-be disclosed “neighborhood” system, in which students will be assigned schools not based on any balancing formula, but on how close they live to the school building.  This reckless and questionable move has the very real possibility of completely destroying the diverse mix of students that has made Wake County Schools some of the best in the nation.

NCSJP is working to ensure that all students of Wake County, and indeed North Carolina, have access to the best education possible, regardless of socio-economic disadvantage or racial composition.   Currently, we are working with Great Schools in Wake County to try to preserve the diversity in the Wake County schools.  In the future, we hope to work equally as hard to increase access to a quality education across North Carolina for every child.