Parents and students object to Millbrook High achievement list
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Parents and students at Millbrook High School are upset that student achievement rates are being posted inside the school and listed by race.
Down a hall, there's a bulletin board filed with printouts on how students stack up, including a breakdown of suspension rates and which group are at risk to fail.
The district says data walls are common and recommended, but parents and students disagree.
"That's rude," said student Mehalahni Winfield. "That's embarrassing and that's really disheartening. That doesn't make a student want to participate."
"It puts people down whenever they see the statistics and stuff," said student Samy Rena-Lopez.
An ABC11 viewer shared pictures through email and wrote, "All it does is feed superiority and inferiority complexes among students."
"Why would you want to put it out there," asked student Calvyn Sykeo.
The reason, the Wake County School District says, is that they are required by the state to distribute this information to the community. Some schools opt to make presentations at PTA meetings, but at Millbrook, the information has gone on a bulletin board for years.
"Data walls are used throughout the district to highlight and bring attention to student achievement and the school's School Improvement Plan," said Millbrook High School Principal Dana King. "We recognize our responsibility to report progress toward meeting goals. Our data wall shows our school community at a glance, where a school has been and where it is headed. It allows everyone to hold us accountable and monitor our progress as we strive to improve student outcomes. We have been presenting student performance data by race/ethnicity for years, as it is important that we know where gaps exist and where we need to focus our efforts."
Some students feel focus on them as they walk through school hallways.
"There's still bullying. There's still a whole lot of things going on, and that's not helping," said Winfield.
The parent who originally contacted ABC11 agrees and feels the information should be dispersed. However, she believes it should be for the parents' eyes, not for the children's eyes. That parent says she only saw the data when her daughter came home from school with pictures.
