The Wake County, N.C., school board agreed last week to cooperate with a national accrediting agency’s review of the system’s high schools, ending a political standoff that could have endangered college and scholarship prospects for students.
The review by Advanced was sparked by a complaint last year from the NAACP, which accused the board of failing to follow its own policies and of not acting in the best interest of the community when making changes, including discarding the Raleigh-area district’s long-held socioeconomic diversity policy.
The board initially fought the review, but the 140,000-student district came under public pressure last month from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and it is facing a probe by the U.S. Department of Education.
