We’re counting on you to make a difference, Atlanta school superintendent Meria Carstarphen told the Class of 2015 during graduation ceremonies this year.
“Don’t waste a single moment,” she exhorted the first high school class to graduate under her watch.
Carstarphen could have been delivering her own bathroom mirror pep talk.
Carstarphen, the former leader of the Austin, Texas, schools, officially started work in Atlanta last summer, a year after more than 30 former Atlanta educators were indicted in a district-wide cheating conspiracy. During her first year on the job, a dozen of those accused were tried and 11 convicted. She inherited a district scarred by national notoriety.
The tasks before her: convince employees that doing the right thing would be rewarded; get APS’ hot mess of payroll, HR and IT systems to actually work for schools; improve academic performance. And push hard, do it fast — but not so much that cheating becomes the only way to succeed.
One year later, Carstarphen has won praise for her high-energy style and moves towards greater efficiency. But as allegations of improper grading practices at Atlanta high schools have surfaced in recent months, even she admits that ethical behavior is still not the norm in Atlanta schools.
Carstarphen has taken the right steps to start the turnaround, said Stephen Dolinger, a former Fulton County superintendent who leads the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education.
“In one year you’re not going to see a big change in any of your typical metrics for school system success,” he said. “She’s been successful so far in helping to get behind a shift in the culture but that’s going to take time.”
One of her biggest successes so far is the fact that she's enthusiastically here. A state Department of Education report released in June cited her "visibility, approachability and responsiveness" as one of the district's major assets.
Carstarphen has succeeded at “making folks feel good about the school system,” Atlanta school board chairman Courtney English said.
“We love you,” she tells students.
She’s visited dozens of schools to read Pete the Cat, eat school lunches, observe classes and talk with teachers, parents and students. She often responds personally to emails. And she hired a new fundraising director to rebuild bridges with Atlanta corporations. Many had backed away after their earlier support for Beverly Hall, the former superintendent indicted for her alleged role as leader of the cheating conspiracy, crumbled.
She is acutely sensitive to the currents of public opinion that swirl around the “new” Atlanta superintendent.
She started a blog to chronicle lunches with students, student and teacher awards and even her music playlist for the Peachtree Road Race — and to push back against what she sees as negative media coverage. Earlier this school year, she warned board members that her job evaluation was to be kept confidential, as allowed under state law. And the debates among superintendent and board members once common at public meetings are now usually relegated to one-on-one meetings and individual emails, with the board voting on million-dollar contracts with little public discussion.
Carstarphen has delivered on promises to cut administrative expenses — at one time the highest in the region. She rebid contracts, reorganized the human resources department to reduce nepotism and favoritism, and launched a long called-for $3.7 million cleanup of the district's troubled special education program.
“We are not an employment agency,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an interview last month. “We are a public school system that is supposed to be educating kids so they graduate on time, ready for college and careers.”
Starting this school year, Atlanta schools will actually seek out the students affected by the cheating scandal and give them extra help — fulfilling a 4-year-old promise. And an ambitious effort to let schools in each neighborhood tailor their programs to local needs is underway.
Carstarphen told the AJC she still struggles with one big question: As you push for rapid school improvement, how do you ensure cheating won’t happen again? She said her team must find the answer.
“If we don’t, I can’t imagine why we would believe that anyone should have faith or hope in us,” she said.
She has pledged a “sea change” to create a culture where decisions are based on what’s best for students.
“If they aren’t up to making that transition they really don’t have a place on the APS team anymore,” she said on her first official day on the job.
But a year later, Carstarphen's new human resources chief admitted that APS employees still fear retaliation for reporting wrongdoing.
This spring, three high school teachers lost their jobs after reporting their principal had changed more than 100 student grades from failing to passing with scant justification. They first reported the grade changes in 2014, but it took Carstarphen’s administration nearly a year to investigate and confirm. Internal district investigators substantiated only one of the retaliation claims.
After reports by the AJC and Channel 2 Action News on several instances of improper grading practices, Carstarphen promised a district-wide internal review. The review, released Friday night, found that changes to higher grades were common after students completed extra work.
The report found that about half of the 2,134 grade changes last year changed numeric grades into higher numeric grades. The others lowered grades or changed letter grades to numeric ones.
No other examples of “serious inappropriate actions” were found. But the review did find “inconsistencies in practice, lack of clarity in process, and a lack of the necessary safeguards to effectively prevent inappropriate activity.”
Ann Cramer, chairwoman of the search committee that brought Carstarphen to Atlanta and of the Atlanta Regional Commission's Educated Workforce Committee, said Carstarphen has clearly done the job she was hired to do. "She's brought hope back into the school system," she said.
But even Carstarphen admits that saying Atlanta schools are better now than they were under Hall, who died earlier this year without standing trial, isn’t really a compliment.
“The past was so low that we’re not doing ourselves any justice by starting there,” she told the AJC last month. “We need to be doing a stronger job on the quality piece.”
In general, Atlanta schools don't do a great job educating children, according to the state Department of Education review Carstarphen commissioned. Student performance is below the state average in in most categories, and the report found no evidence of setting common expectations for what and how to teach or checking that teacher training the district spends millions on is useful.
Carstarphen is under more than a few deadlines.
If she doesn't turn around about two dozen schools by 2017, for example, some could face state takeover if voters approve an Opportunity School District constitutional amendment.
The average big-city superintendent's tenure is about 3 years. Carstarphen has a 3-year contract.
Beth Hogan, whose children attend Burgess-Peterson Academy, has been impressed by Carstarphen.
“The (school) visits weren’t just photo ops. You can tell from her blog she was trying to get the climate and personality of each school,” Hogan said. “Having that perspective going into what could be hard decisions over the next few years will be very important.”
At board meetings, parents have sung “I’m in love with a girl named Maria.” But picketers have also shown up with signs urging “Send Carstarphen back to Texas!”
The stakes are high for Carstarphen, who could ride a successful turnaround in Atlanta to a national reputation as the woman who did the impossible. But they’re even higher for Atlanta’s more than 50,000 students.
Darius Marshall, 19, was hazy on who exactly Atlanta’s superintendent is. But as he waited to walk on stage this May with his fellow B.E.S.T. Academy graduates, he offered this advice for Carstarphen.
“Don’t give up on us,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of people that were terrible students turn into all-A students. We can get it done.”
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