If the Opportunity School District passes in November, some failing schools in Georgia will be taken away from local school boards and districts and given over to an appointed superintendent who is likely to recruit charter school management organizations to run them.
There are already public schools under state control — charter schools approved by the State Charter Schools Commission. In an analysis, a Georgia State University doctoral student and researcher says the disappointing academic performance of those schools raises questions about whether state control is necessarily better than local control.
"On average, the charter schools now operating in Georgia are lower quality than traditional public schools. Much like traditional schools, the quality varies a great deal. Some of the best schools in the state are charters. Some of the worst schools in the state are charters," says forensic auditor Jarod Apperson, a doctoral student and researcher who writes the Grading Atlanta blog. "If anything can be learned from the gap between the results from locally approved charters and state charters, it is probably that good charters tend to get approved locally. It takes an incredible amount of time and dedication to run a successful charter school."
Apperson says, “The proposal would allow the OSD to take over up to 20 schools a year (the agency could elect to take over fewer schools). The scope of that potential undertaking is striking given there are only about 20 good charter schools in the whole state today and it took almost two decades to get here. The notion the OSD could open 20 schools of good quality in a single year seems tenuous. I would feel more comfortable if the plan was two per year, rather than 20.”
To read more, go to the AJC Get Schooled blog.
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