It was an educational experiment that seemed to be working: divide big, anonymous, modern high school campuses into smaller and more intimate schools, so teachers could know their students, and help them grow.
Now, Atlanta Public Schools says it’s rethinking the idea, angering parents in the process.
Less than four years ago, then-Superintendent Erroll Davis let the public in on a secret: the Early College Academy at Carver High School, in a low-income area south of Turner Field, had some of the best metrics in the district: a 100 percent graduation rate and students who were showing big gains on state tests, though not top scores.
"That is the highest-performing school we have right now," Davis said at a public forum in 2011. "I don't know that everybody knows that. We haven't publicized it."
Early College, where students took some classes at nearby colleges, shared a campus with three other, lower-performing schools.
On Thursday, Carlton Jenkins, the district’s chief academic officer, told a crowd of agitated students and parents that too many kids were ill-served by the model and that it was time to “right size” the school. “We’ve looked at the small school results,” he told them. “It’s mixed.”
On April 13, the school board is scheduled to vote to consolidate Carver from the current four schools to two, doubling the size of Early College and establishing a “comprehensive” school for the other half of the student body.
Teachers could lose their jobs, and parents fear the results of disruption.
“If something’s not broke you don’t fix it, right?” said Carl Alexander Williams, whose daughter is in the science and technology school. “Why not let it exist as it is?
Raven McQueen, a junior at Early College, put Jenkins on the spot, demanding to know why APS was leaping to this new model so quickly. Two other district high schools, D.M. Therrell and Booker T. Washington, are already consolidating, so why not wait and see how it works for them, she asked.
“Great question,” Jenkins responded. But he didn’t have an answer. “I’m going to have to think more on that.”
Another school, South Atlanta High, would be consolidated along with Carver. Parents at South Atlanta got that news Wednesday.
McQueen, 16, fears losing the personal connection she’s developed with her teachers and staff. She moved to Carver from a big high school in Cobb County where she felt like “just a face — just one of some 2000 kids. But here,” she said, “my principal knows every student’s name.”
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