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Clay Aiken and Wake County Schools

Singer Clay Aiken of "American Idol" fame caused a bit of a stir recently when he voiced his displeasure with the new regime taking control of the Wake County Board of Education.

Aiken, who graduated from high school in North Raleigh, described the new majority, whose main goal seems to be to reverse the district's socioeconomic diversity policy, as "selfish idiots."

I wouldn't go so far as to call them that, but they could do more harm than good.

We'll have to see.

We also need to be fair. The proponents of the diversity policy have produced little empirical data to show that it's working.
If they believe in its efficacy as devoutly as they say they do, they ought to be willing to measure its impact.

Wake County has been an interesting case study in the philosophical battle over diversity and attendance zones versus neighborhood schools.

In Guilford County, it seems we long gave up the ghost on diverse schools, which today are logistically and politically impossible to achieve.

It fragments the community and shortchanges students on life lessons, such as getting along with others who may look or speak differently.

How many times have those blind spots played out among adults in racial division and bad public policy?

But there’s little hope or community will here for our inevitable march toward largely segregated have and have-not schools.

That's too bad, but, alas, it's the way things are.

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