Thomas B. Fordham Institute - Advancing Educational Excellence

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children?

November 1, 2006

The Fordham Report 2006: How Well Are States Educating Our Neediest Children? appraises each state according to thirty indicators across three major categories: student achievement for low-income, African-American, and Hispanic students; achievement trends for these same groups over the last 10-15 years; and the state's track record in implementing bold education reforms. It finds that just eight states can claim even moderate success over the past 15 years at boosting the percentage of their poor or minority students who are at or above proficient in reading, math or science. In addition, most states making significant achievement gains--including California, Delaware, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and Texas--are national leaders in education reform, indicating that solid standards, tough accountability, and greater school choice can yield better classroom results.

View the press release for this report

Contents

Georgia

 

 


 

Rising Again, Slowly

Today's Georgia is a long way from that portrayed in James Dickey's classic novel Deliverance. From its gleaming jewel, Atlanta, to its exclusive barrier islands, Georgia is a state on the move. And this is certainly true in education.

The state's education system, unlike that of a number of other Southern states, was late to the accountability and standards party. But when the state decided to finally engage, it did so fully.

Consider its approach to writing curriculum standards. When State Superintendent Kathy Cox came to office in 2002, she quickly recognized that the state's academic standards were a mile wide and an inch deep. (A Phi Delta Kappa audit in 2002 found that those old standards would take 23 years to teach, not 12.) Rather than start from scratch, Cox borrowed from other states that had already developed solid standards documents. She called upon prominent experts, and to improve the math documents she looked overseas and borrowed from Japan.

The end result is a set of better focused standards that offer clear guidance as to what students should know and be able to do. The curriculum is specific and subject areas are connected throughout multiple grades-good enough to earn a B+ on average from Fordham's tough reviewers. 

Of course, setting good standards is merely the first step toward education improvement-and Georgia still has many steps to take. For example, the percentage of Georgia's African-American eighth-graders who have reached proficiency in math or science according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is in the single digits.

While Georgia has posted limited gains on the math NAEP over the last decade or so, it's much too early to celebrate. After all, the state had nowhere to go but up. Consider graduation rates: Just 61 percent of Georgia's ninth-graders will graduate from high school on schedule. Only South Carolina does worse, according to the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center.

Governor Sonny Perdue is the latest in a line of Georgia governors (notably, Zell Miller and Roy Barnes) focused on education.  Perdue has made raising graduation rates a key issue for his office. In 2006, he launched a program that puts graduation coaches in high schools. In the first few months of the program, 336 coaches identified 40,000 students who were credit deficient and falling off the graduation track. The response has been to tailor graduation roadmaps for thousands of students and match many of them with mentors. Perdue will request funds to put similar coaches in all the state's middle schools in 2007.

The governor deserves kudos for working to raise the graduation rate, but pulling marginal students across the finish line at the end of the race won't produce students with the types of skills they need to excel in the future.

Thankfully, many local districts are thinking ahead, using the reams of data being gathered by the state's testing system to follow each student throughout his or her tenure. The state test itself isn't much to brag about (it rates a D- for its lax definition of "proficiency" in reading and math), but the gaps it exposes are real.

In Gainesville, for example, the district has implemented an accountability system for each student, with benchmark testing every two to three months. One of its schools was cited by President Bush in his acceptance speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention for its impressive passing rate on standardized tests.

The state is also making use of virtual schools-high schools in particular-to give the state's rural population the chance to take Advanced Placement courses that may not be available at their local brick and mortar school. Georgia has also made free SAT prep available statewide via the Internet. That's a good thing, considering that Georgia finished 46th among states in average SAT scores in 2006.

But for all its willingness to raise standards and adopt innovative ways of educating its youngsters, Georgia remains largely resistant to charter schools. The state has just over 50 charters, most of them in the Atlanta metro area. There have been some success stories, such as the predominantly African-American Tech High School in Atlanta where scores are at or near the top citywide. The success of such charters may be partly due to the thorough screening process they have undergone; in Georgia, they must survive scrutiny at both the district and the state level to receive their charter. (This barrier also helps explain why there are so few schools.) If only the state were as conscientious about funding these schools as it is punctilious about licensing them. State law does not offer charter schools funding for facilities or other nonacademic essentials, such as transportation or nutrition programs. Some modest funding changes were enacted in 2005, but charters remain woefully under-resourced.

While Georgia is taking its time with nontraditional schools such as charters, it is moving faster to open nontraditional pathways into the teaching profession. The state now offers several alternate-route programs to encourage midcareer professionals to enter the education field. That includes aggressive use of the federal Troops to Teachers initiative, which takes advantage of the state's many military bases.

Nearly 20 percent of Georgia's new teachers of 2005 came through some form of alternative certification. Since the state also hired about a quarter of its teachers from out of state-meaning there are still plenty of jobs in fast-growing Georgia for graduates of traditional education programs-alternative certification has been generally accepted.

All in all, Georgia is dancing to the school reform beat. It ranks among the top 10 reform states nationwide and is now the leader in the Southeast. If it can stay on its toes, some big gains in student achievement could be right around the corner.

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