Where are our preliminary results?

Wake County Schools have announced that it expects as many as 10 of its elementary schools to fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress for the second year in a row and enter School Improvement status.

According to the No Child Left Behind law, if a school fails to meet its AYP goals for two consecutive years, parents at the "failing school" must be immediately granted a choice of other schools for their children to attend.

According to an article titled "10 Wake schools fall short," Wake County based its announcement on "a review of preliminary data."

Where is our "preliminary data"?

Given that Central Elementary is widely expected to miss its AYP goals for the second consecutive year and CES parents will have the choice to move their children to another Orange County elementary school for this coming school year, shouldn't parents be made aware of the status of their children's school as soon as possible?

Does the OCS staff know the results of the EOG tests, or does Wake County simply have more insight into its student performance than Orange County?

If they already know how the students performed, why aren't they sharing that information with parents and the community? Did any of our other schools fail to meet their goals, and become at risk in the coming year?

Could it be that they are waiting as long as possible to reduce the likelihood that CES parents will choose to transfer to another school? Perhaps the OCS perspective is that the closer we get to the start of the new year, the less chance there will be for CES parents to visit their choices of other schools, and, in turn, the more likely they will be to stay where they are.

According to the law, families that choose to exercise their right to transfer out of a "failing school" must be allowed to stay at the new school until the child has completed the highest grade offered - even if the "failing school" improves and its sanctions are removed. That could pose a long-term problem for those more concerned with "ensuring socioeconomic balance in the district" than providing the most appropriate education for each student.

From the perspective of a school system bureaucrat, I can see why this would be an undesireable situation. Complying with the law is expensive, and the less you have to spend on actually providing at-risk students with an legally mandated adequate education, the more you can spend on elementary school softball fields and middle school scoreboards.