Nurturing for a Bright Tomorrow in Wake County
Wake County
The Need in Wake County Public Schools
The Wake County Public School System requested an independent audit of its AIG program in March 2013. The auditors noted that the student demographics of the AIG Program do not mirror the racial and ethnic representation of WCPSS students. Notably, many WCPSS schools had a significantly low overall AIG identification rate, and minority groups and students from high poverty areas were underrepresented in the overall total of identified AIG students. The audit also revealed disparities in WCPSS AIG student achievement. Current data trends suggest that the gaps are unlikely to close at the present annual growth rates. Auditors recognized the difficulty of increasing test scores when scores are already very high. Nevertheless, the audit team concluded that student achievement for many AIG students is not improving, but rather was stagnating. As such, implementing Bright IDEA is an attempt to address the low number of students in AIG, the underrepresentation of minority groups and socioeconomically disadvantaged students in AIG, and the stagnating achievement of students in AIG.
