For many local advocates and educators, the fate of the Chief Turnaround Office is a cautionary tale on the pitfalls of injecting politics and quick-fix solutions into the hands-on work that comes with helping Georgia’s neediest students.

This upcoming school year, state officials are set to distribute nearly $24 million in federal grants to around 230 schools statewide for improvement purposes such as teacher training, outside specialists, data tools, after-school programs and books. Many of those schools have stayed among the state’s lowest test scores and graduation rates for years.

Since the turnaround office’s closing, some of its former staff have taken jobs at local schools and districts. Others have become consultants or are retired. Only a few have remained at the state education agency to continue working with local districts and regional groups to give struggling schools a boost.

“No matter who does it, to me the work of school improvement is work that every school should do,” said Alexander, the former turnaround specialist team’s leader. “It’s difficult work.”

With the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting classroom teaching and test scores for more than a year, state and local school officials could use all the help they can get to ensure students at already low-performing schools do not fall through the cracks.

As Clayton County Public Schools’ superintendent, Morcease Beasley oversees three schools stuck on the state’s low-performing list for the last few years. The lack of standardized test scores during the pandemic has made it difficult to track those schools’ progress, he said. But Beasley’s schools still face significant challenges, even if they earn good enough scores to remove them from the state’s list. Just a fraction of students in his district received pre-kindergarten instruction, leaving them a step behind other parts of the state in reading and math proficiency, he said.

No matter what the state or a special legislature-created office may do, Beasley and other educators agree the burden is on local school administrators themselves to help their students turn a corner for the better.

“At the end of the day, we’re more interested in ensuring that all our students are getting what they need to be successful,” Beasley said. “Whether you’re on a state list or not, we’ve got to do it in order to get where we want to go.”

NOTE: This story has been updated to clarify the timing of Eric Thomas’ resignation, the jurisdiction of the internal audit, scope of a lawsuit from a former staff specialist and Thomas’ formal response to his management of travel reimbursements.

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Header image credit: Governor’s Office of Student Achievement