Stay ahead of the curve as a political insider with deep policy analysis, daily briefings and policy-shaping tools.
Request a Demo- Nearly 42% of Georgia charter schools closed or reverted to traditional public districts.
- Roughly 1 in 26 Georgia students enrolled in charter schools in spring 2021.
- Academic progress promising for most charter schools.
Michele Neely knew nothing about charter schools when she set out to find a less regimented, less test-focused school for her children. She found the right fit at the International Charter School of Atlanta, a north Fulton County charter school with a more relaxed attitude on test scores and with classes in more than just English as a dual-language immersion program.
The experience was so worthwhile that once her kids aged out of the K-8 school, Neely hopped on the charter-school bandwagon and became president of the nonprofit State Charter Schools Foundation of Georgia.
“I was frustrated with everything being such a traditional approach,” Neely said of traditional public K-12 schools in a recent interview. “A school is so much more than just their (test scores) and their ranking.”
However, while Neely’s kids’ charter school has stayed open since 2015, dozens of other charters in Georgia have either closed or reverted to traditional public schools since 2009, according to an analysis of state data by State Affairs.
Meanwhile, dozens more charter schools have also opened during that time, many of which show promising trends in boosting academic progress for some of Georgia’s roughly 150,000 students at chronically low-performing schools. That track record paints a curious picture of the staying power of Georgia’s charter schools, particularly once the COVID-19 pandemic ends and many parents rethink where they want to send their kids to school.
“Our charters are really incubators for innovation,” Neely said. “If they see they need to make adjustments, they can quickly pivot and be very responsive to the community.”
Those less confident in charter schools see the high closure and reversion rate as evidence the charter model offers better educational options on paper but falls short when it comes to actually delivering a better school experience for lower-performing students.
“Charter schools have not been the panacea that some folks claim them to be,” said Jimmy Stokes, a retired Georgia educator and former executive director of the Georgia Association of Educational Leaders.
“They thought this was going to be a marvelous invention of schooling that would result in academic achievement,” he said. “And it hasn’t.”
NEXT
Election administrators ‘in limbo’ over new voting rules, top official says
If you plan to hand-deliver your absentee ballot to your local election office this year, you’ll have to show identification and sign a form stating whose ballot you’re dropping off, under a new rule recently passed by the State Election Board. If you fail to show your ID or don’t complete the form, your ballot …
Weekend Read: State Election Board marks its 60th year mired in controversy. Here’s what happened.
In 1964, Georgia lawmakers retooled the state’s election process to create a “one person, one vote” system after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the “county unit system” that held sway over Peach State politics for nearly half a century. Until then, politicians hoping to win primaries in Georgia had to capture entire counties, not just …
State lawmakers: Atlanta, give detention center to Fulton to fix problem-plagued jail
Atlanta city officials need to give the Atlanta Detention Center to Fulton County to ease overcrowding in the county’s violence-prone jail, a bipartisan panel of state lawmakers said in its final report, released Friday. “A big part of the solution is that the City of Atlanta needs to turn over the Atlanta Detention Center to …
Georgia plays a prominent, although louder, role at this convention, too
As the second of the two biggest political party events wraps up this evening in Chicago with Vice President Kamala Harris accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, all eyes in Georgia are turning to the grand finale — the Nov. 5 election. “We are all energized because we know we are bringing back hope for our …