School Takeovers Outside Georgia Have Shown Mixed Results
Georgia voters will decide this fall whether to give the state the authority to take over schools it labels “chronically failing.” The plan would create a separate, state-run district for those schools. This idea has only been tried in a few other states, with mixed results.
Earlier this month, a coalition of groups held a rally at the state Capitol to express their opposition to the plan. They marched to Liberty Plaza, across the street from the Gold Dome, chanting, “You can’t take our public schools! Local control rules!”
The group then delivered hundreds of wooden rulers to Gov. Nathan Deal’s office, signed by teachers and students, which said, “Local control rules!”
What’s Been Tried
Representatives from different groups, including the state PTA and the Committee to Keep Georgia Schools Local, explained why they opposed the plan.
“Every place that this model has been tried – including New Orleans, Memphis, Tennessee, Nashville – everywhere this model has gone, it has failed,” said Georgia Association of Educators President Sid Chapman.
Whether school takeover models have “failed” in other states is up for debate. Georgia’s plan is partly inspired by a system used in Louisiana to rebuild New Orleans’ schools after Hurricane Katrina, but it’s more closely based on a model used in Tennessee. State officials there created an “Achievement School District” in 2012. It now runs more than 20 low-performing schools.
Gary Henry, a professor of public policy at the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt, studied the results of the ASD after three years.
“We found no evidence that the students performed either better or worse than the priority schools that were not a part of the Achievement School District,” Henry said.
Georgia’s plan would create a similar setup, called an “Opportunity School District.”School Takeovers Outside Georgia Have Shown Mixed Results | WABE 90.1 FM:
