If Gov. Nathan Deal’s “Opportunity School District” plan passes this legislative session, a new statewide district will soon have the authority to turn around up to 100 chronically failing schools across the state.
But school district leaders don’t have to wait to start doing something to improve poor-performing schools, thanks to flexibilities they have today.
Deal’s plan includes ingredients that have boosted student performance elsewhere in the country: granting schools autonomy and holding them accountable for student success, improving the talent pipeline for teachers and principals, sparking innovation, and offering new options for families stuck in struggling schools.
If Georgia lawmakers OK the governor’s plan this session, the changes wouldn’t become a reality until 2016, when voters would have to approve a constitutional amendment to let the plan move forward. In the meantime, Georgia school district leaders have the opportunity before them to fix their own schools.
In 2008, state lawmakers required every school system to sign on to one of three operating models by July 2015: the “status quo,” which offers no flexibility from state mandates; Investing in Educational Excellence, which offers districts flexibility from some state rules, like class size, in exchange for signing a performance contract with the state; or charter, the most dramatic shift from the way traditional school districts operate.
Under the charter system, which can include charter and non-charter schools, districts must establish school-level governing boards with decision-making authority. They gain robust flexibility from state mandates in exchange for agreeing to meet certain student performance goals.
School districts may feel reluctant about adopting, much less embracing, any state mandate. But school system leaders should see the charter option as a real opportunity, not just the state’s latest compliance exercise.
Leaders in Fulton County schools, the state’s fourth-largest school system, have been using the charter option since 2012 and seeing success. With flexibility from state mandates, Fulton is pursuing a strategy that decentralizes decision-making to its school communities.
It is part of a growing network of jurisdictions — more than 45 nationally representing over 4 million students — that are pursuing some variation of the“portfolio strategy,” in which leaders think about empowering schools in new ways. The strategy gives schools more control over budgets and teachers, gives families the freedom to choose from a variety of schools, and presses leaders to expand successful schools until every child attends a great school regardless of the child’s zip code.
Fulton is turning over major program decisions to its schools, tapping proven pipelines for great teachers, and paying the best teachers more to teach in struggling schools. Early results are encouraging. Community engagement is high, and in recent years, dropout rates have fallen — from 24 percent to 12 percent overall, and for African-American students, from 34 percent to 17 percent — and graduation rates are on the rise.
Fulton is bringing about the change it wants to see in its school district. Other Georgia districts have the opportunity to do the same. If they don’t act, a new district will do it for them.
