The Norcross Experiment
Norcross High School is a microcosm of Atlanta public education. You couldn’t create a better lab for incubating great ideas—and this school has teachers and staff bubbling over with them.
Photograph by David Walter Banks
Most schools in metro Atlanta are dominated by one demographic. They’re poor, affluent, white, black, or Hispanic. Their classrooms are filled with fourth-generation Georgians—or refugees who arrived in Atlanta last month. Maybe the hallways swarm with hordes of well-off parents who fund booster clubs, cheer at games, and micromanage their kids’ Advanced Placement schedules—or maybe the PTA can’t even raise a couple hundred bucks because parents work two jobs just to keep the lights on. Some schools steadily churn out HOPE Scholarship–qualifying, SAT-acing, college-bound graduates every May; others are dubbed dropout factories.
Then there’s Norcross High School. Within this 413,000-square-foot complex on Spalding Drive, there is such a