State School Superintendent John Barge warned 600 local-level school officials Friday to expect big changes if Georgia is allowed to alter how its schools are evaluated.
Barge said he expects to know later this month whether U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will grant Georgia a waiver from provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, including the requirement that all schools be evaluated annually to determine whether they made adequate yearly progress.
“We’re feeling pretty encouraged,” Barge said at the 2011 annual conference of the Georgia School Boards Association and Georgia School Superintendents Association. “You will know as soon as we know [about the waiver] because we will be shouting it from the rooftops.”
Barge has asked Duncan to allow Georgia to shift to evaluating schools using a college- and career-ready performance index to rate schools next year, though any penalties would not kick in until the following year.
He told the group, which also heard forecasts about upcoming legislation and comments from Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, that NCLB was “well-intentioned legislation” with “a lot of good pieces.”
Although some schools went above and beyond, schools as a whole concentrated on “making sure we got kids past the test,” Barge said, referring to the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, which was a big factor in schools’ AYP determination. Some have speculated that pressure to score well on the CRCT contributed to cheating.
The co-chairmen of a legislative committee on school funding — state Sen. Fran Millar, R-Dunwoody, and Rep. Brooks Coleman, R-Duluth — said they expect legislation to be introduced next year to phase in more funding for school nurses and to abolish a requirement that school systems spend 65 percent of their state money in the classroom.
Millar said there is no evidence that the 65 percent rule improved student achievement.
Cagle told the group that lawmakers aren’t in agreement on what to do in education.
“Some want wholesale vouchers,” but those people fail to realize that public schools have to educate the masses and private schools do not, he said.
“Most in private education are not willing to surrender their ability to choose who comes and who they dismiss,” he said.
But Cagle said school systems need to be innovative, more in tune with students’ individual needs and have greater flexibility.
He touted the state law he created allowing school districts to take the charter route, which is seen as giving them more flexibility.
“I want to give you the tools necessary to design a curriculum around the needs of your community, but more importantly around the needs of your students,” Cagle said.
He also told the crowd that it’s imperative that the state build its economy around education. The state’s college and career academies are working, Cagle said, noting that 80 percent of future jobs will require some type of technical training and adding that industrial certification may be a big boost for many students.
“I want every child to go to college and fulfill the dream,” he said. “But I want us to be in reality for a moment, not fantasy.”
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