MEET AND GREET
Superintendent candidate Meria Carstarphen will meet with the Atlanta community at several “open house” events Saturday:
- 9-10 a.m.: Washington High School
- 10:30-11:30 a.m.: North Atlanta High School
- Noon-1 p.m.: Grady High School
- 1:30-2:30 p.m.: Jackson High School
- 3-4 p.m.: South Atlanta High School
- 4:30-5:30 p.m.: Mays High School
MyAJC.com
Log on to MyAJC.com to view a timeline of Meria Carstarphen’s tenure in Austin, and visit the Get Schooled blog to read more about the challenges ahead for the sole APS superintendent finalist.
ATLANTA SUPERINTENDENT SALARIES
Beverly Hall: $322,424 in the 2010-2011 school year
Erroll Davis: $258,837 in the 2012-2013 school year
Meria Carstarphen: $283,412 in the 2012-2013 school year as superintendent in Austin, Texas. Her Atlanta salary has not yet been announced.
Sources: http://open.georgia.gov/ and The Austin American-Statesman
CARSTARPHEN’S EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
- Doctorate in administration, planning and social planning with a concentration in urban superintendency from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education
- Master of education degrees from Auburn University and Harvard University
- Bachelor's degree in political science and Spanish from Tulane University
Source: Atlanta Public Schools
ATLANTA PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The district is one of the largest in Georgia:
- 50,000 students
- 7,000 employees, mostly teachers
- 95 schools
- $658 million budget next school year
MyAJC.com
Log on to MyAJC.com to view a timeline of Meria Carstarphen’s tenure in Austin, and visit the Get Schooled blog to read more about the challenges ahead for the sole APS superintendent finalist.
ATLANTA SUPERINTENDENT SALARIES
Beverly Hall: $322,424 in the 2010-2011 school year
Erroll Davis: $258,837 in the 2012-2013 school year
Meria Carstarphen: $283,412 in the 2012-2013 school year as superintendent in Austin, Texas. Her Atlanta salary has not yet been announced.
Sources: http://open.georgia.gov/ and The Austin American-Statesman
CARSTARPHEN’S EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND
- Doctorate in administration, planning and social planning with a concentration in urban superintendency from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education
- Master of education degrees from Auburn University and Harvard University
- Bachelor's degree in political science and Spanish from Tulane University
Source: Atlanta Public Schools
ATLANTA PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The district is one of the largest in Georgia:
- 50,000 students
- 7,000 employees, mostly teachers
- 95 schools
- $658 million budget next school year
When she was a student at Harvard University, Meria Carstarphen learned from urban education leaders she considered “giants of the business” — the generation of reformers who demanded test-based academic results and rigorously measured improvement.
One of those reformers who visited Carstarphen and her classmates was former Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall, the disgraced leader whose school system job Carstarphen is in line to take.
Today, while Carstarphen still strongly believes in accountability and metrics, her approach emphasizes legitimate student achievement that goes beyond teaching to the test. She wants children to have a more complete education that starts at home and extends into the classroom.
Carstarphen, 44, would take over an Atlanta school district that is still on the rebound from a broad cheating scandal that took place while Hall led the city’s education system from 1999 to 2011.
“I’m as sad as everyone else that this is where Atlanta is,” Carstarphen said as she was introduced this week. “It won’t help any of us to … spend a lot of time thinking about the past. It’s very important that we learn from it and put measures in place to move things forward.”
If the school board votes to hire her next month, she’ll try to put the focus back on the classroom and away from the courthouse, where Hall and 12 others face trial on conspiracy charges. She would replace Superintendent Erroll Davis, who plans to retire this summer, three years after taking over in Hall’s wake.
During Carstarphen’s time as a doctoral student in Harvard’s Urban Superintendents Program, she said Hall and other large city superintendents would meet students and talk about their work as school district leaders.
Since earning her doctorate in 2002 — long before suspicions of cheating in Atlanta schools arose — Carstarphen has worked as an accountability officer in Kingsport (Tenn.) City Schools and District of Columbia Public Schools before becoming the superintendent of Saint Paul (Minn.) Public Schools and the Austin (Texas) Independent School District.
Carstarphen has gained a reputation as a bold executive who blends the business task of managing a large organization with the more intimate work of educating students. She got her start in education as a middle school Spanish and documentary photography teacher in Selma, Ala.
She upset some Austin parents with her handling of charter schools, a bond issue and school closures, but she touts achievements such as raising the graduation rate and test scores during her five-year term in Austin.
“She’s a very data-intensive person. She looks at the data and figures out what needs to be done to improve test scores. Realistically, that’s what every large district does these days,” said Robert Schneider, an Austin school board member and critic of Carstarphen. “We haven’t agreed about things all the time, but I do believe she tries to be open and honest.”
Although Atlanta is a smaller school district, with 50,000 students compared to 87,000 in Austin, Carstarphen may face significant challenges if she’s chosen for the job.
Atlanta has a lower graduation rate, at 59 percent, compared to Austin's graduation rate of 82.5 percent, although it was unclear Friday whether the graduation rates were calculated using the same methodology. Atlanta's school system also serves more low-income students, with about 24 percent of residents below the poverty line compared to about 20 percent in Austin, according to census and school district data.
“She’s going to have half the students but double the problems,” said Ken Zarifis, president of Education Austin, the labor union for Austin teachers. “When I look at Atlanta, it seems to me that there’s got to be a huge level of distrust, and that’s hard to overcome.”
The model of education reform has changed over the last decade, said Dan Domenech, executive director for AASA, the School Superintendents Association.
Urban education leaders now place a greater emphasis on helping students outside of school by improving their home environment, nutrition and health care, he said.
“They’re not looking at a fill-in-the-bubble standardized-test approach. They want to provide for the needs of these kids,” he said. “You could say she’s a reformer, but I would refer to her more as a quality educator who has the best interests of children at heart.”
Carstarphen would combine her classroom experience and her time as a leader of city school systems if she becomes Atlanta’s superintendent, said Cobb County Superintendent Michael Hinojosa, who knows her from his time as the Dallas superintendent several years ago.
“She works so many hours. When I talk to her late at night, I’m going to bed when she’s just getting home,” said Hinojosa, who plans to resign this summer and move back to Texas. “Meria is so student-centric. She’s a hands-on type of leader.”
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