Wake County Public Schools has hired someone for the new “Office of Equity Affairs”.

You read that correctly, “Office of Equity Affairs”.

The office’s budget is an annual $204,846,  The title of the role there is Assistant Superintendent and is being filled by Rodney Trice with a base salary being $125,000.  Let’s think about the optics here:

• Teachers haven’t seen their raises yet.
• The Wake County School Board, along with Superintendent Merrill, want to hike taxes to pay for their own county’s teacher raises.
• Let’s keep a social justice office on the books and pay someone 125k  to run it while a lawsuit related to said office is ongoing in Wake County. Coincidence I’m sure.

Superintendent Jim Merrill apparently made the appointment as the position was vacant in the 2013-2014 school year. The selection of Trice occurred in May. I guess we shouldn’t be shocked, after all, the Wake School board is a proponent of dropping zeros for work left undone in the name of socioeconomic justice.

The Wake Board’s comments are social and economic justice themed; calling the position the ‘conscience of the organization’ yet what it looks like Trice has really been hired to do is to spin the testing gap for Hispanic and Black students and alter discipline in our schools.

Remember the ‘school to prison pipeline‘ theme I told folks to remember? Well, Trice fits that narrative. He was already promoting the same theme in Chapel Hill where they began messing with discipline policies that some parents say targeted Hispanic and Black kids unfairly. No one has yet to point out how  that written code of conduct is racist. The assumption seems to be that somehow the school’s code of conduct and the resource officers or administrators enforcing said code are doing so unfairly. Has it ever entered into the discussion that maybe they are treating them fairly and like everyone else? Maybe it’s the kids not the code?

So who is Rodney Trice?
He was the Executive Director for Curriculum & Instruction at Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. He’s now the ‘Associate’ Superintendent of the “Office of Equity Affairs”.

Trice’s  Twitter feed is interesting.

Just saw CHCCS Dreamers marching on 15/501 #cirasap #immyouth #Dreamers

— Rodney Trice (@Rodney_Trice) April 16, 2014

Many immigrant families have no experience being labeled a minority, which is a form of microaggression – Elizabeth Vera #MSANMini13

— Rodney Trice (@Rodney_Trice) November 19, 2013

Trice seems to be a fan of Common Core. That’s disappointing since the Common Core appears to be widening the gaps, not closing them.

School counselors role in supporting the Common Core State Standards #CCSS http://t.co/5pHUO0r2bV @MSAN_Achieve #MSANMini13

— Rodney Trice (@Rodney_Trice) November 18, 2013

Trice also tweeted Tony Petrosky’s opinion on SBAC and PARCC:

Under #SBAC #PARCC assessments middle and high school students will be asked to do what college freshmen are now doing -Tony Petrosky #IFL — Rodney Trice (@Rodney_Trice) December 7, 2012

They can be asked to, doesn’t mean they SHOULD be. 
Both tests are horribly flawed and implemented poorly. States are dropping them like hot potatoes for that reason and for the reason they are tied directly to Common Core. NC is an SBAC governing state. We should be pulling out of the SBAC and moving to nationally normed and open-sourced tests or NC should be developing their own. Be wary of the ACT, SAT and GED folks — all have been Common Core aligned.

P.S.
Petrosky’s an out-of-touch Educrat with a background in poetry that somehow made him qualified to at one time be the “the Principal Investigator of the design team to develop assessment prototypes in English language arts and literacy for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC).”  Petrosky was also one of the people responsible for the age and developmentally inappropriate ELA standards as he served on the Reading and English Common Core Standards Project.  Makes sense since he and David Coleman are apparently friendly. In a nutshell Petrosky is a ground-level Common Core true believer and the testing outfits pay/paid him to go promote their junk.