The Wake County schools and the school board's retrenchment on diversity policies got lots of negative news recently for N.C. - so much so that Gov. Bev weighed in Thursday.
First, U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan sent a letter to the Washington Post recently on the matter. He said it was "troubling" to see the board "take steps to reverse a long-standing policy to promote racial diversity in its schools" and he said other school systems should not follow suit. "In an increasingly diverse society like ours, racial isolation is not a positive outcome for children of any color or background," he wrote. "School is where children learn to appreciate, respect and collaborate with people different from themselves. I respectfully urge school boards across America to fully consider the consequences before taking such action. This is no time to go backward."
Then there was the Stephen Colbert spoof of Wake County's changes on his comedy show, "The Colbert Report." That's what got the good guv up in arms. She said she was "unhappy" with the spoof - with good reasons. North Carolina came off looking a tad backwards.
Colbert used his "The Word" segment on Wednesday to skewer Wake school leaders. One hilarious part showed real footage of school board chair John Tedesco taking note of changes that would lead to schools with mostly poor kids. Tedesco: "If we had a school that was, like, 80 percent high-poverty, the public will see the challenges, the need to make it successful...Right now, we have diluted the problem, so we can ignore it."To which Colbert archly responded: "See? Misguided government do-gooders foolishly diluted the problem by addressing it. We need to ignore it, so we'll pay attention to it!"
To view the video, click below:
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3 comments:
That's great Arne!
Why didn't you make the same comments when you came to Charlotte?
Because the soundbite wouldn't have done you any favors?
CMS is overwhelmingly a minority "majority" school system, as CMS is only 33% White.
Hey Arne? Busing is dead. Get over it.
Perhaps Wake would not have been featured on Colbert or in the Washington Post if Bev had stood up to the NAACP and told the truth about academic achievement under busing in Wake County. Instead she has pandered to Rev. Barber.
You say:
"[Gov. Perdue] said she was "unhappy" with the spoof - with good reasons. North Carolina came off looking a tad backwards."
"A tad?"
It doesn't take Colbert to make our state look backwards, and it's a heckuva lot more than just "a tad". No, all it takes is for our "leaders" to open their mouths, and all doubt about our state's backwardness is removed.
This goes for idiots like members of the Wake County school board, as well as the sub-idiots who are many of the newly-elected members of the General Assembly.
No, the way for our state to continue to look - and, in keeping with the state's motto of "esse quam videre" (to be rather than to seem) - to actually be backwards is for our uninformed voters to keep putting idiots like them into office.
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