Coming this fall: More work on a controversial Atlanta Public Schools proposal that could lead to rating its own schools.
District leaders in August began developing an improvement plan aimed at boosting APS schools, but the work stalled last month after the school board approved the broad outlines of the plan but not nitty-gritty details that had sparked controversy.
A group of parents who support the effort want the school board to commit to a timeline to push the project forward. They said Atlanta schools need accountability to spur schools to get better.
The district developed a plan to rate schools and then respond to failing schools by closing or merging them or hiring charter-school groups to run them. Schools that excel could be expanded or replicated.
But the board stopped short in March of authorizing a customized school rating scorecard and the menu of options spelling out what could happen to schools based on their grade.
Teesha Snow, an Atlanta mother of eight and member of the group Atlanta Thrive, which has advocated for the proposal, said there’s an urgent need for the school board to act.
“A lot of these kids are graduating from high school and can’t get into college … they are still failing in life because they weren’t prepared for the future in these same schools that are just passing them along,” she said, at a news conference the group held this week before a board meeting. “We need this to change. We need it to change now.”
RedefinED Atlanta, a charter-friendly nonprofit that provided $235,000 for consultants to help create the plan, also has called on the board to keep going.
School board Chairman Jason Esteves has backed the proposal, which the district calls the "Excellent Schools" project. But when it came before the board for a March vote, he recommended board members approve only the first phase, which it did by a 5-3 vote, and not the rating system or the potential consequences failing schools could face. He said he did so to allow more time to get public feedback on the plan.
Critics have blasted the plan as a way to justify closing schools or outsourcing them to charter operators. They contend APS should know how schools are performing and that the rating system would create a costly and unnecessary tangle of bureaucracy.
Initially, APS officials intended to spend the spring and summer developing the specific measures and weights that would make up each school’s grade — such as the level of family engagement and if a school was closing the academic gap between white students and students of color.
But instead of the board approving the rating system first and then fleshing out the specifics, board members are “going to be more involved in doing it,” Esteves said.
He said the end result may not be a rating system but some other way to measure schools.
He expects the board will return to that work in the fall as part of its discussion about creating the district’s next strategic plan.
