It’s always seemed there might be a little bit of hoax about the Wake County School Board’s ‘diversity’ policy – that the policy was really about race and not academics (as the board has argued for years).

The board has made its case like this: It says it buses students based on their family incomes in order to create schools with a ‘diverse’ mix of rich, poor and middle class students. Why? Because, the board says, ‘diverse’ schools perform better academically – for example, in ‘diverse’ schools students from poorer families make better grades.

Unfortunately it seems a recent battery of state tests have left the school board’s academic argument in tatters.

Charlotte does not have a ‘diversity’ policy. Instead, several years ago, it returned to a model of neighborhood schools, and on the recent state tests Charlotte’s students out-performed Wake’s – a fact parents who oppose Raleigh’s latest plan to bus 24,000 students were quick to point out.

That evoked an eruption from Wake County School Board Chairwoman Rosa Gill, who let fly, saying Charlotte is “going back to a segregated school system” – which certainly sounded like ‘diversity’ has more to do with creating racial balance in schools – than with academics.

Now Charlotte’s return to neighborhood schools has left its schools less ‘diverse.’ Schools in African-American neighborhoods are attended, mostly, by African-American students. But Charlotte is also spending extra money on those schools and, as a result, students attending them are making more progress than students in Wake County. So, naturally, some Wake County parents are asking if the 24,000 students (who are being ‘reassigned’) are being bused for no good reason – that is, unless you agree without ‘diversity’ we may be headed back to the days of Jim Crow.

The News and Observer summed the whole flap up this way, saying, “The state’s largest school district [Wake County]… has used buses instead of greenbacks to address the academic needs of low-income students.” That puts the difference between Raleigh’s schools and Charlotte’s in perspective: Wake County’s solution to the challenges facing low-income students is to bus them; Charlotte’s solution is to spend more money on their schools.

Now, which makes the most common sense?

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