Wake Schools to Present Update on Low-Performing Restart Schools

Wake County school officials are presenting an update today to the Wake County school board during a work session on efforts to turn around 40 Restart schools. "Wake County school officials on Tuesday plan to highlight how they are trying to turn around some of the district's lowest-performing schools," the district said in the materials accompanying the update.

The district defines those campuses as Restart schools, "schools that have been labeled low-performing two out of the last three years and that apply for the Restart program." Wake County's Restart roster of 40 schools is eligible for program flexibilities intended to accelerate improvement; the Restart model "gives them charter school-like flexibility with things like funding and school calendars," a description included in the district's presentation materials.

District staff told the board that progress varies across campuses. "Most of the Restart schools still meet that criteria of low-performing two out of the last three years, according to the district's report Tuesday, but some have exited that," the report states. The presentation anchors its assessment to that two-out-of-three-year metric and highlights individual school-level interventions that the district says are in place for campuses remaining on the Restart list.

State policy sets the broader framework for Wake's local work. The State Board's DSTR-040 policy notes that "The model currently requested and approved for authorization is the Restart model, which allows a Local Education Agency to apply for authorization to allow a recurring low-performing school to operate with charter like flexibility." The State Board also records that "Currently, there are 29 districts approved by the State Board to operate 152 Restart schools with Restart Authorization." DSTR-040 was revised in March 2020 to clarify Academic Gain criteria and a five-year monitoring cycle, was adjusted in May 2020 to account for COVID-19 data gaps, and received a further December 2020 update in the policy text.

State documentation excerpted with Wake's materials shows several Wake campuses flagged on multi-year low-performance tables. The excerpt lists Wake County Schools entries including Bugg Elementary (920352), East Garner Elementary (920403), East Wake Middle (920410), Green Elementary (920440), Walnut Creek Elementary (920599), and Wendell Middle (920601) with low-performance flags in the snippet provided to the board.

The district presentation also acknowledges the political and technical debate around how low performance is measured: "Low performance is based mostly on test scores, a calculation and designation that has been fraught with criticism." That line framed the board discussion on whether state testing and the Academic Gain calculation accurately capture progress at schools serving students with high needs.

Board members will receive the slide deck and the district's report during the work session, which is the formal venue for this update. The presentation ties Wake's local counts and school-level snapshots to the State Board's Restart authorization framework, and it establishes the immediate question for the board: which of the 40 Restart campuses show measurable academic gains under the state's criteria, and which require continued or different turnaround strategies.