Barack Obama can move crowds, restore hope and narrow the Achievement Gap in a single bound. That’s the gist of a small study recently submitted for review to The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Researchers found that President Obama inspires African-American test takers and makes them feel confident. As a result, they perform better on tests.

The performance gap between a group of African-Americans and a group of whites on a 20-question test administered before Obama’s nomination practically disappeared when the exam was administered after his acceptance speech and again after the presidential election, according to the report’s authors.

The study sample was small, and it’s hard to imagine that the results will extend throughout Obama’s term. But it speaks to the importance of expectations. Schools can do wonders by instilling a sense of competence in every student of every background. Young people who feel confident raise their own expectations.

Chairman of the State Board of Education Howard Lee said he is irritated by allegations that the state discriminates against charter schools that predominantly serve black students and shuts them down unfairly.

“I will not accept that kind of accusation.” he told the board on Thursday.

He said, “We don’t have black charter schools. We don’t have white charter schools. We don’t have Latino charter schools. We don’t have male charter schools. We just have charter schools…It is my intent to hold every school’s feet to the fire.”

Lee said he plans to meet with a group of lawmakers who have asked that the board refrain from closing any more charter schools until a study of the process can be undertaken.

“I will meet with those legislators but cannot recommend that we suspend our work.”

In 2002, there were 60,000 students in North Carolina’s K-12 schools who did not speak English as their first language. By 2007, that number had doubled to 112,500.

According to a report released today by Education Week and the Editorial Projects in Education, North Carolina has done a commendable job training teachers to work with immigrant students. Twenty years ago there were only three colleges or universities in the state that offered English-as-a-second-language certification for teachers. Today there are 14. However, the report gives North Carolina an F on per-student spending for all students, which strains programs that focus on students who are learning to speak English. The full report, How English-Language Learners are Putting Schools to the Test, can be found here.

Wake county parents who vehemently oppose the school district’s reassignment plan make a simple argument that sounds like good, common sense. The county shouldn’t waste time and money transporting students to schools that are 15, 20, even 30 miles away when there are schools within walking distance of those students’ homes. The disgruntled parents have a point. In an ideal world, schools would get out of the regional transit business. But the challenges facing Wake county schools, and school districts all over the state, are far from ideal.

As long as dozens of schools in high-growth areas burst at the seams while schools in stagnant areas of the same communities have wiggle room, school officials will have to build new schools and shuffle students to even out enrollment. As long as school systems struggle to retain highly-qualified teachers at low-performing schools in low-wealth communities, they must at least try to balance the percentages of students from low-medium-and-high income families enrolled at individual schools during the already painful reassignment process.

End-of-grade test scores plummeted at schools across the state last school year. The State Board of Education and Department of Public Instruction announced Thursday that only 52.6 percent of students scored at or above the proficient level on both the reading and math general tests given in grades 3-8.

Only 31 percent of schools met the standards for Adequate Yearly Progress, a measure of school performance under the federal No Child Left Behind education law. A total of 69 percent of schools, 1,664 of them, did not make Adequate Yearly Progress. About 100 schools in North Carolina have been designated as “low performing.”

The low scores are a direct result of newly implemented testing standards for reading, a long overdue change that will increase the odds that North Carolina’s students can compete with their peers around the nation and the world.

However, North Carolina needs to do a better job of easing the transition for the majority of schools that are struggling to meet the new requirements.

There are tools already in place that can help the state better serve schools and students. For example, the Disadvantaged Student Supplemental Fund, which received a significant but inadequate increase in funding in the most recent budget, will help some schools provide students with needed resources.

In addition, parents and advocates must push for greater use of Personal Education Plans, which are available to any student who scored a Level I or II on the end-of-grade tests.

To vew the 2007-08 performance results by school district go to www.ncpublicschools.org