I'm pretty sure most here already know who they wan't to vote for, and could care less for political spamming, but watching Tuesdays debate, Al Gore caught my attention with this statement regarding education:

Under my plan, if a school is failing, we work with the states to give them the authority and the resources to close down that school and reopen it right away with a new principal, a new faculty, a turnaround team of specialists who know what they're doing to

I hadn't heard that before, and it sounded a bit interesting...at least until he concluded with:

-- it's based on the plan of Governor Jim Hunt in North Carolina, and it works great.

Being from NC, I almost fell out of my chair. We don't HAVE such a plan to "close down that school and reopen it right away with a new principal, a new faculty, a turnaround team of specialists who know what they're doing." NO N.C. school has ever been shutdown, or a principal or faculty replaced by "a turnaround team." Gore must be basing his program on another Jim Hunt in another NC....

On Wednesday, the Charlotte Observer reported that in the first year, the law gave the state the authority to remove a principal, though it never did so. And after the first year of the program, the law changed to have the local school superintendents determine whether to remove a principal.

I've read about the NC "ABC" plan a good bit over the years, which basically sends in "teams" of two or three educators to help a school out. Thats it. And schools can continue to fail, with NO shutdowns, or much of anything else.

http://www.charlotte.com/schools/abc00/0804abctest.htm

Unfortunately, the article on the page above entitled "School Ratings Stir Questions of N.C. Teams" has a dead link, but suffice it to say the results while encouraging, are not overly impressive. Our teachers are working harder at teaching the basics, but improvements are flatening out. And no schools are being shutdown nor are there provisions for shutting them down. Here's what happened at two low performing schools: http://www.charlotte.com/schools/abcs99/0806abclow.htm

But boy, it sure sounded good to the rest of the nation.

FYI, NC ranks near the bottom (47th or 48th) of all the states in SAT scores. I urge caution before adopting our "great" education program....

-- FactFinder (David@bzn.com), October 19, 2000