By Guest Columnist DANA RICKMAN, director for policy and research at the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education
Throughout all of 2015, Gov. Nathan Deal’s Education Reform Commission conducted a “top to bottom review of public education.” The goal of this effort is to make education “more accessible and effective in preparing our state’s students for the rigors of college and the workforce.”
By Maria Saporta
As published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on April 15, 2016
So close, and yet so far.
The Cristo Rey Atlanta Jesuit High School has received a $3 million gift from the Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation to help the innovative school renovate and move into a downtown office building.
But before it can make the move, Cristo Rey, which serves students from lower-income families, will need to raise up to another $3 million for the renovation and up to another $6 million to build a gym that would also be the assembly area for the school.
By Guest Columnist TAIFA BUTLER, executive director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute
People pushing proposals to bring casinos or horse tracks to Georgia are hitching their chances to the gold-plated brand that is the state’s HOPE Scholarship. Not a bad play.
By Guest Columnist DANA RICKMAN, policy and research director for the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education
On Dec. 10, 2015, President Barak Obama signed into law the “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA).
This law reauthorizes the “Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965,” which has been more recently known as “No Child Left Behind.” This important legislation has provided Georgia an opportunity to set its own direction and determine the best way to support schools and districts.
Friday morning was a Kumbaya moment for the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Public Schools.
Leaders from both entities heralded the end of a hard-fought battle over how much the City of Atlanta owed APS over tax revenues from the Atlanta BeltLine.
It appears that a long-awaited agreement between the Atlanta Board of Education and the City of Atlanta on their multi-year dispute over Atlanta BeltLine payments will be announced Friday morning.
In conversations with several people familiar with the negotiations, the agreement will include a new payment schedule that will extend through 2030 – totaling $73.5 million over the next 15 years.
After emerging cancer-free from treatments for prostate cancer diagnosed in May, Jim Kennedy has provided a $25 million grant from the family foundation he oversees to Emory University to improve patient treatment and outcomes.
It took almost a year from the time the first such recommendation was made, but Atlanta now has a pilot program to teach the skills folks need to compete for jobs in the burgeoning film industry.
Proximity to a charter school increases home values in three metro Atlanta school districts, according to a new report released by Georgia State University.
The difference of a single letter highlights the impact of Literacy Action by taking the written word to open up the world and last night’s Student Recognition Ceremony showcased the ability to change the trajectory of people’s lives by empowering students to see what is achievable in the world and to be open to the […]
The burgeoning degree program of culinary sustainability at Kennesaw State University will be housed in a school named for Michael Leven, the president/CEO of the Georgia Aquarium who made a $5 million commitment to the program, the state Board of Regents decided Wednesday.
A dozen years after Congress created a commission to promote financial literacy, SunTrust Bank continues to provide volunteers to help students in metro Atlanta learn methods to manage their money.
Gov. Nathan Deal announced today a round of state teaching awards, months later than planned and after Deal defeated state school Superintendent John Barge in the Republican gubernatorial primary election.
Georgia created the Innovation in Teaching Competition as part of the state’s implementation of President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, which is to provide $400 million to Georgia through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
This fourth round of awards was slated to be announced in spring 2014, according to a state website. Teachers from metro Atlanta school districts dominate the overall winners list.
A New York credit rating agency on Tuesday assigned a top score to the $36 million bond package the DeKalb County school district intends to sell Wednesday.
Also Tuesday, the Wallace Foundation announced DeKalb as a recipient of a $3 million grant to improve the leadership skills of its principal supervisors or regional superintendents, and to increase the number of regional superintendents in order to reduce a span-of-control that now averages 27 direct reports.
Taken together, the measures mark the continuation of the district’s slow but steady improvement from situations involving its accreditation probation and fiscal management in the 16 months since the DeKalb school board first named former state Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond as interim superintendent.
A new report that calls for overhauling Georgia’s method of paying for K-12 education has landed near the starting gate of a potentially contentious gubernatorial campaign.
State Sen. Jason Carter (D-Decatur) has put education reform at the front and center of his new platform. Gov. Nathan Deal responded immediately that he has increased the state’s contribution to school funding despite the recession.
The timing couldn’t be better for a report from the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute that calls for the creation of a funding program to replace the state’s existing school funding formula, known as QBE (Quality Basic Education).
A new report on state funding for K-12 education raises some challenging questions about Georgia’s ability to provide a skilled workforce to businesses – especially in areas beyond metro Atlanta.
School districts are coping with funding cuts through measures including trimming days from the school year and assigning more students to each teacher, according to the report from the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute. School budgets are squeezed by shrinking state support and by the declining local tax base caused by the recession, the report states.
Even as school districts are strapped, the Georgia Department of Economic Development is touting Georgia’s workforce development policies including its support for charter schools, pre-K programs, HOPE scholarships, and strong public technical schools and universities. Georgia has adopted common core standards in math and language arts, and allocates extra funding to districts that provide gifted programs, according to DEcD’s webpage.
By Douglas Sams and Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, February 1, 2013
A new nonprofit organization backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that aims to transform American education is considering Atlanta for its headquarters.
The nonprofit, supported by the world’s largest philanthropic organization, would make Atlanta the center of a cohesive effort to accelerate student achievement in the United States by boosting personalized learning in schools.
By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, January 18, 2013
The East Lake community is close to realizing its dream of offering top-quality education from cradle to college.
On Jan. 15, Gov. Nathan Deal joined other dignitaries to break ground on the new Drew Charter School Senior Academy at the Charlie Yates Campus in East Lake. The academy will permit Drew to teach students through high school. Currently, the Drew Charter School serves nearly 1,000 students from pre-K through 8th grade.
Morehouse College, the alma mater of Martin Luther King, Jr., has received a credit rating that’s barely investment grade, and with a negative outlook, on $23.4 million in bonds to be sold this week. The rating is just three notches above a rating of speculative.
Kennesaw State University has received a credit rating that’s solid investment grade, and stable, on $41.6 million in bonds slated for sale last month.
These two ratings illustrate the divergence of credit risk among Georgia’s institutions of higher learning. As state lawmakers consider Gov. Nathan Deal’s proposal to borrow almost $200 million this year to expand facilities at public colleges and universities, they face going to market in a sector dinged as negative across the board by Moody’s Investors Services.
