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The "potential good" of public schools is provide good civc education, whatever the population demographics of the disctrict/building. However, most public schools today are diverse, as the white flight has taken many students to private, parochial, or charter schools. As districts close down buildings the schools become more diverse and with good teaching, students can thrive in this environment.

Does Tedesco actually believe his drivel that isolating the children of poverty will draw attention and assistance to the problems they face?
Poverty is the 800 pound gorilla in the room when education is discussed and it isn't because the problem is being "diluted" by integration. The truth is that poverty is much easier to ignore when politicians, administrators, and others can push it out of their own neighborhoods and lines of vision. Too many people dismiss the problems of poverty until those problems become crime in their insular neighborhoods and gated communities.
I teach in a high poverty elementary school in a major city. We have been hit very hard with recent budget cuts particularly since many of our students need special services such as speech, physical therapy, health screening, counseling, etc. Teachers add these responsibilities to their own because the need is there. More than 80% of our students qualify for free lunch, but nobody is looking at our school and what the students need and offering help.
If you drive ten or more miles to the east or the south, conditions at schools get worse, but if you drive ten or more miles west (towards the ocean), the schools have higher test scores, greater parent involvement, more funds (because parents write grants and organize fundraisers)allowing them to maintain their staffs. Teachers can focus on teaching and the resources often attract more resources. Philanthropic institutions want the promise of sustainability when awarding grants, something poor schools can't generally offer.
Poor schools get attention from those who are hellbent on ending public education... the group that ignores the more successful wealthier public schools because those schools don't support their message of mass failure.
Separate but equal schools are part of the same delusional thinking that brought us trickle down economics. Public education is about giving all children access to 'the American dream' and if Wake County has successfully given poor children that through complete integration it needs to be the model for the rest of our nation.
Perhaps if people like Tedesco would remove their hoods, they could get a clearer vision of the world.

Of course Tedesco is wrong to say we should ignore poverty if it's not too bad off, and we do and should teach more than academics in our schools. However, the focus is indeed academics, and when we make anything else our focus, academics suffer.

Putting a small percentage of Wake Co. children on buses for an hour to AND from school to get exposure to non-poverty is a big tradeoff for these kids, the young ones, anyway. 5% of our kids = over $70 million to bus them. How's that for a return on investment?

Raleigh is not a big city like "Kinder Teacher" describes in her comments. My son goes to a high poverty school. We could use a bit more parent involvement, but I adore the community atmosphere. The principal holds the children to a high standard of excellence, both academically and socially. Why anyone would bus a child away from her and our outstanding teachers is beyond me.

I'm sorry Tedesco and Barber have made a mockery out of a legitimate issue that we should have resolved ourselves. Media spotlight greed is as media spotlight greed does...

It seems like everyone agrees that education is about more than pure academics.

And I think that Kinder Teacher is right in speaking about the challenges of poverty. I personally agree that the "separate but equal" thinking is delusional, and that (as Anonymous Wake County Teacher points out) there will be some very negative consequences, especially for the low-income children and neighborhoods, to ending an economic integration policy (though I do think that there is a cost to the district for busing - I think the reimbursement does not fully cover the cost of busing).

I also agree with Kinder Teacher that the problem is easier to ignore when it is out of your backyard...and think about resources. If two schools each have 400 students and one school social worker, but one of the schools as 40 children living in poverty and the other has 360, which is going to have the harder job...and which kids are going to get the attention that they need? (Of course, school social workers do much more than work with kids in poverty, but I'm using a very general example here).

Yet Wake County Parent raises some important points. Namely, that there are valid reasons to question whether this policy is in the best interests of the community as a whole. And I think this person is also right - and having to deal with an unfortunately too-common occurrence: An extreme voice (or extreme voices) crowding out more moderate, measured and considered opinions on an issue of great importance.