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At the August meeting of the Coweta County Board
of Education, Coweta County School System Director of Public
Policy Mark Whitlock presented board members with an update of
the school system’s preparation to move towards new and more
flexible operations of the local school system, which are being
allowed by the state of Georgia.
Whitlock has led the school system committee that will advise
the superintendent and school board regarding the Coweta County
School System becoming either an IE2 (“I.E.-squared’) or charter
school system.
Whitlock reported on the results of focus groups and a community
survey that have been conducted throughout 2011, and recommended
that results be categorized into a number of broad school system
goals that could form the basis for greater flexibility from
current state rules regarding education. He also laid out a
possible timeline for the school board’s decision in the coming
years.
By 2015, all school systems in Georgia must choose between one
of the three operational categories that will define their
relationship to the state of Georgia. Those categories include
Investing in Educational Excellence (IE2) legislation, or
charter school system legislation, both of which allow school
systems more local control regarding important education
decisions and expenditures, and link accountability with
increased flexibility. The other option is to remain a ‘status
quo’ system, which offers little flexibility and innovation from
current educational regulations.
The Coweta County Board of Education agreed last year to explore
both the IE2 and Charter System options. These options would
require that the local school district work with either or both
the Georgia Department of Education and the Governor’s Office of
Student Achievement to create a strategic plan that identifies
the flexibility sought from Georgia education laws,
accountability goals that the district is willing to accept at
the school and system level in exchange for the flexibility, and
other factors.
To determine what those areas of flexibility should be, Whitlock
and other committee members conducted 17 focus groups during
March and April, with approximately 250 participants, and
conducted an online survey over the months of May and June,
which gathered over 250 responses.
“The whole thrust of either IE2 or charter system is how you can
use innovation to improve student achievement,” said Whitlock.
“That is what we asked of participants – to present ideas for
educational innovation that community stakeholders want to see,
which will improve student achievement, to direct us in seeking
the flexibility that we will need to seek” as the school system
becomes either and IE2 or charter school system.
“In doing that, we had over 500 people in this community weigh
in on their ideas for innovation that would help us maximize
student achievement,” said Whitlock. “Those participants
included parents, students, teachers, business partners, chamber
board members, college faculty, school council members, school
principals and counselors, and others,’ he said.
The committee recommended to the Board that the responses
collected be organized into five broad innovation categories for
the system (listed in order of priority):
• Preparation for Transition and Future World of
Work—College/Career
• Technology Innovation
• Parent/Community Collaboration
• Maximizing Resources
• Continuous Improvement
Whitlock also said that the Georgia legislature has moved the
deadline by which school systems must determine what kind of
school system they will be, from 2013 to 2015.
“We suspect they did that in part because of anticipated changes
to state and federal educational legislation,” he said.
“Governor Nathan Deal has created a finance study committee that
may yield funding changes to the Quality Basic Education act,”
which determines school funding and other educational
regulations state-wide. “A similar committee commissioned by
governor Perdue created the concept of IE2 systems to begin
with, and created also the notion of ‘status quo’ school
systems, and said each school system must have a strategic plan
and pick among operating systems by 2013, now 2015.”
Federal No Child Left Behind legislation is also due to be
reauthorized, Whitlock noted. “That law appears to sunset in its
anticipated use by 2014,” he said. “We don’t know what form a
new law might take, but we hear that there will be a broader
focus on measures of student improvement – not just high stakes
testing, but things like college and career readiness and
student growth, versus just measuring student groups against
each other.”
Because of those anticipated changes, Superintendent Steve
Barker recommended to the School Board that they work towards a
draft contract that could be developed and negotiated with state
during 2012 and 2013, assuming that any anticipated state and
federal changes have been realized and taken into account by the
system’s plan.
The new contract could be implemented during the 2013-14 school
year. That should give the school system time to take into
account any changes to state and federal education legislation,
align the data in detail within the five categories proposed,
align the categories with SACS standards, and develop the
specific state waivers required in order to implement the
innovations requested in a school system contract.
“With all of this happening right now, we need to make sure we
understand everything fully, before we move forward," said
Superintendent Barker. “Once we know more about legislative
changes at the state and federal level, we can begin to put
student achievement measures into a contract and fully negotiate
it.”
“If we tried now to put in student achievement measures and
goals earlier than that date, those might be totally changed by
the governor’s study committee or reauthorized No Child Left
Behind legislation,” he said.
“There are some other advantages to that,” said Whitlock. “We’re
a big system. We’re going to need to simulate some of that
innovation to see the impact it will have on schools and
departments. That’s an important opportunity this proposed
timeline gives us.”
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