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If Cary were to pull out from Wake County and form its own school system, it would have some major obsticals...namely the need of a lot more school space. Many kids in Cary currently go to schools in Raleigh, Apex and Morrisville. If Cary were to "seceed" and create "Cary Central Schools". Just considering High schools ONLY; they'd have to find room in the only 3 high schools in Cary (Cary High, Green Hope, and Panther Creek) for all of the students who live in CARY, yet go to Apex High (MacGregor and areas around there as well as areas around 55 and Jenks Road), and Athens High (Lochmere and surrounding smaller subdivisons). As you get down into middle and elementary school levels there are even more areas where the kids live in Cary but go to schools in other towns. You'd have to either build or expand a lot more schools IN the town of Cary, which already has limited space compared to most of the rest of Wake County...and this would almost definitley causes taxes to go up significantly.
The town or area of Cary WILL NOT be allowed to withdraw from the Wake County school system. A group tried that recently with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools and were laughed out of the state capitol. The state legislature would have to approve such a plan and they're not about to ok something which would cause so much disruption to the Wake CO. Schools or the state board of education. Will never happen and for good reason....
The town or area of Cary WILL NOT be allowed to withdraw from the Wake County school system. A group tried that recently with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools and were laughed out of the state capitol. The state legislature would have to approve such a plan and they're not about to ok something which would cause so much disruption to the Wake CO. Schools or the state board of education. Will never happen and for good reason....
Like I said, it could just be a leveraging tactic. However, I would not totally discount it, as Cary is very progressive. Either way, Cary has a much better school system than most, which is one of the big reasons why so many families want to move here. Good school systems = excellent home values.
I have to agree as a local Wake County resident and now Cary resident, I don't think this is something Cary will ever approve of or try to make happen.
I've not seen any empirical data on that either. Based on what I've seen (from greatschools.net, NCLB--which is a joke but hey, it's a number, rankings of national standardized tests and other miscellaneous criteria), I would say that Wake Co has *one* of the stronger school systems in North Carolina. That's as far as I would feel comfortable going out on a limb here.
It's difficult at best to compare state-to-state but in all the state-to-state rankings I've seen, I've never seen NC in the top 10 or even top 20. I've even seen schools ranked by county (sorry, I can not provide a link and I can't recall the actual information), I've not seen Wake Co schools up in the top tier. I've seen individual schools (most notably, ECHHS, CHHS and Jordan HS) ranked highly though. However, I don't know what criteria were used for those rankings.
It is hard to compare state by state, and it's hard because obective data across different states varies plus you have to factor in resources, types of standardized tests etc. But I do know several years ago WCPSS was rated number 3 in the country in Forbes magazine amongst cities (which is why Chapel Hill schools were not included in this ranking because it was done based on population). Number one was Boston and number 2 was Salt Lake City. It IS the top performing county of the larger districts in NC. It's MUCH easier to make comparisons throughout the state than it is to compare across states without looking at SAT scores, graduation rates etc. If you are only looking at those things, WCPSS is significantly higher than the national averages. It beat out Charlotte schools last year on NCLB objectives and SAT scores, graduation rates etc. Wake also boasts the highest rate of teacher certification in the country.
I don't think WCPSS is the best system in the country by any means, but I would say based on the objective information that is available, Wake schools compare favorably to other high performing districts in the country.
I don't think WCPSS is the best system in the country by any means, but I would say based on the objective information that is available, Wake schools compare favorably to other high performing districts in the country.
It is hard to compare state by state, and it's hard because obective data across different states varies plus you have to factor in resources, types of standardized tests etc. But I do know several years ago WCPSS was rated number 3 in the country in Forbes magazine amongst cities (which is why Chapel Hill schools were not included in this ranking because it was done based on population). Number one was Boston and number 2 was Salt Lake City.
I'm going to have to track down that article and read about which criteria they used to come up with Boston as a #1 ranking! That's a laugh. There might be a *few* (and I mean a very few) schools within Boston city limits that are performing ok, but overall the entire city school district is a mess. My town and most suburbs are filled with people from Boston in search of good schools.
That's odd that the article was based on population. It doesn't really give you a clear picture of good school districts.
It was based on more than just population, but it specifically compared cities of a certain size and therefore would not have included smaller school districts like Chapel Hill or even the smaller suburban districts liek where you live ( I assume). That's the only reason I mentioned the population size. They had several other factors that they looked at, one of which was access to educational resources and a few other things. It wasn't based solely on test scores or anything, they rated them based on some index which included several factors besides performance. And yes, Boston was the top of the list!
Last edited by lamishra; 04-04-2008 at 06:42 PM..
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