Parents of special needs students in the Atlanta Schools rejoiced this past week when Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue signed into law the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship bill. Formerly known as Senate Bill 10, the proposed voucher plan has been watched closely by parents and educators in Atlanta Schools.
The law will use state funds to offer vouchers to parents of children with special needs in order to provide them with more appropriate school options. Atlanta Schools’ teacher, and parent of a child with autism, Linda Bryant Butler expressed her pleasure in a recent article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “…parents like me are ecstatic that we will now have a choice. If one school doesn’t work for Xavier during his 12-year academic career, I know he won’t be trapped. He will have the choice to seek a better education elsewhere,” she said.
Parents in Atlanta Schools and throughout the state will have the option of using vouchers to attend a different public school or a private school. In order for a child to be eligible, he or she must have a documented developmental disability (such as Autism or Tourette’s Syndrome) and have attended public school for at least one year. Estimates are that the program will provide $4,000 worth of vouchers in the first year, and that amount will increase to about $15,000 a year. Atlanta Schools’ educators are expressing some mixed feelings over the vouchers.
Proponents say that this is the only way Atlanta Schools can truly meet the needs of these exceptional learners. It simply isn’t possible to have a specialist for every disability at every school. They also point out that Atlanta Schools’ teachers already struggle to meet the needs of students without developmental delays.
Opponents express concern over both the standards of private schools, and the removal of funds from the public school sectors. Atlanta Schools receives government funding on a per pupil basis, and the loss of an additional $9,000 (the estimated average voucher payout) per student could weaken the abilities of the public schools.
Governor Perdue has stated that this law will give parents more control over their children’s education, and that they “understand the needs of their child in the way only a parent can.”
Atlanta Schools have debated voucher programs, along with the rest of the nation, for years. But if the program is successful, Atlanta Schools may find itself copied around the country.
Not all Atlanta Schools’ parents with special needs children will opt for the program. If a child is successful at his current Atlanta School, no changes will be made. But if parents are interested in applying for the scholarship program they should visit the Georgia Department of Education website at doe.k12.ga.us and click on the link for the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship.
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Some local public school students consistently outperformed their metro Atlanta neighbors on the state's standardized tests this year, while others struggled mightily, according to data the Georgia Department of Education released Friday.
System-level scores from the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, given in elementary and middle schools every spring, showed that students in Forsyth and Fayette counties performed among the best in nearly every subject and grade tested this year, while pupils in Atlanta and Clayton County frequently ran into test trouble.
In some cases, the disparity in academic performance was huge. For example, in science, which is one of the most difficult of the five subject tests, 62 percent of Atlanta sixth-graders failed, compared to about 14 percent in Forsyth. In fourth grade, 52 percent of Clayton's schoolchildren flunked science, while just 9 percent did in Forsyth.
Clayton officials did not return a phone call to them seeking comment. Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall said her students have been making steady progress for years and will continue to do so.
"Our system still has a way to go until all students are performing at high levels," she said in a written statement. "[But] we have obviously found the right formula for success, and if we stay the course it is just a matter of time until it can be said that all of our schools — at all grades — are fully effective."
Paula Gault, Forsyth's outgoing superintendent, said she was pleased with her students' high scores this year — a success she credited to teachers' willingness to tackle the new Georgia Performance Standards, a more challenging curriculum now being rolled out in Georgia public schools.
"Our teachers have done an excellent job implementing standards-based teaching to promote high levels of learning for our students," Gault said in an e-mail statement.
Holly Robinson, who keeps close tabs on state test scores as senior vice president at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, said the results may be disheartening in some places, but officials can turn around poor performance if they pay attention to the data.
"We have this great data ... and we need to be sure that systems ... are using it and using it well," she said. "We need to be sure this data is being used to improve instruction and to target instruction to those students that need it."
Students and teachers do have an incentive to do well on at least some of the state exams. Officials at the state education department use the annual tests to determine which students may be promoted to fourth, sixth and ninth grade.
Performance on the math and language arts portions of the assessments also is used to judge how well systems and campuses are teaching their charges — an annual evaluation that's required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
So far this year, state officials have only released statewide and system-level data. Performance for individual campuses may not be known for another week or two.
Stone Mountain mother Marney Mayo, whose children attend the International Community School, a charter school in Decatur, said she's not surprised by the stark differences in test scores among metro Atlanta school systems.
But she said she doesn't believe the exams give a good indication of the quality of a school or system, either.
"It's useful because it's the only empirical measure that is actually available to me as a parent that is not subject to a bureaucrat's interpretation," she said. "But it's not sufficient for me to judge the quality of the program."
Staff writers Diane Stepp and Eric Stirgus contributed to this article.