Four days a week, for 45 minutes, the students at Marietta Middle School break away from ho-hum of math and social studies. Some spend that time learning how to not be disruptive. Others collect and bag recyclables, or learn to bake or get a bit of extra help in a subject that’s giving them trouble.
At another school, it might be difficult for administrators to swing such unstructured time; a rigid curriculum dictates how students will spend much of their day. But five years ago, Marietta City Schools, with 8,000 students, became one of the first districts in Georgia to become a charter system.
That status has given Marietta City Schools broad flexibility from Title 20, a three-inch book of rules that regulates everything from how schools spend their money, to who teaches what and how long they teach it. Charter schools are expected, in return, to improve student performance.
How good of a job they’ve done will be evaluated over the next three months, and the results of that analysis will determine whether Marietta City schools should get its charter renewed for another five years.
“We’re going to be saying, ‘We got off your back, now how’d you do?’” said Louis Erste, the director of the charter school division for the Georgia Department of Education.
Marietta administrators said they increased the number of students in grades 3-8 exceeding standards on state exams from 33 percent to 51 percent. To do so, they used teacher incentives, rearranged class schedules and increased class time for students who had fallen behind.
Right now, there are now 17 charter systems in the state, including Fulton County, one of the state’s largest.
“We used our time, talent, resources and partnerships to do things differently,” said Emily Lembeck, the Marietta City schools superintendent.
But administrators admit they’ve had challenges along the way. Even though charter schools are allowed more flexibility, it’s not always easy to come up with different ways to reach students.
“One of the things that has been learned is that innovation is not easy,” said Martha Greenway, a consultant and former administrator with Fulton County, who assisted Marietta during its renewal process. “There almost seems to be this assumption that the only reason student achievement hasn’t improved is because people haven’t been allowed to do what they know will work. People are doing the best they can but there is no silver bullet.”
In their renewal application, administrators said they plan to work to improve their high school graduation rate, which is at 59 percent.
The extra money Marietta receives for being a charter system, about $680,000 a year, is at risk of being cut this legislative session because of austerity cuts, said Erste. That may provide more challenges ahead, Marietta administrators said.
“Innovation isn’t cheap,” said Marietta’s operations administrator, Preston Howard.
Under the system, teams consisting of parents, teachers, staff members, the principal and a community liaison are set up at each school.
The group has the power to, among other things, write school improvement plans and determine how to spend Title I money, federal dollars set aside for schools that have a high percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch. .
Giving non-educators power over schools proved beneficial, said Howard, who works closely with the school’s governance teams.
“They ask us, why do we do what we do?” Howard said. “Maybe there are ways to do things better or more effectively. And they help us identify real versus perceived problems.”
They also gave science and math teachers bonuses for staying with the district for three years and grants to teachers who came up with new ways to teach. They scheduled in a daily advisory period for their high school students to talk about career goals and their academic progress.
At Marietta Middle School, Timothy Jones, the school’s principal, said the charter system status has allowed him to work closer with parents to come up with new ways to get students more enthused about school.
The governance teams created a reward program for students who don’t often get recognized, bought lockers for their band instruments and allowed held-behind eighth graders take online courses to receive high school credit hours.
Asked why the district’s charter status should be renewed, Jones was direct.
“It works,” he said. “We’re going to have to innovate or else we’ll fall behind.”
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