Racial Achievement Gap Persists at Wake Schools

Wake County school board members agreed Saturday to set new goals for improving minority student performance after a report showing that the state’s largest school district isn’t closing its racial achievement gap.

Superintendent Tony Tata told board members that a new outside audit shows that Wake hasn’t closed the achievement gap on state exams between white students and minority students. The new audit draws different conclusions from internal reports showing that the gap has narrowed in Wake.

“The bottom line is . . . there has been no reduction in the achievement gap in the last three or four years, so that tells us we’ve got to do something to get after that,” Tata said at Saturday’s school board retreat.

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Tata will consult staff and principals before coming back to the board with “reasonable” targets for each racial and ethnic group. He said he’d also discuss what impact meeting those individual goals would have on Wake’s overall achievement.

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