Atlanta Public Schools - Decisionmaking Makes No Sense (Buckhead: elementary schools, closing)

[LovelySummer]

Ok, so APS closed Capitol View Elem School last year - which was the highest performing third grade (in terms of test scores Atlanta Public Schools | Contact Information and Links) in all of city of Atlanta - and has regularly performed very well in the city of Atlanta. Capitol View was closed due to "low attendance," the teachers (who obviously knew how to teach) lost their jobs and the students were shipped to failing schools with greater attendance numbers. Same thing this year - Beecher Hills - one of four IB elementary schools in city of Atlanta (and the only one not in Buckhead) is scheduled to be closed for low attendance.

So, APS, what gives? Closing the good schools, displacing the good teachers bc of low attendance and shipping the students to failing schools.

This sucks. Seems like the teachers that are excelling should be rewarded. Shut down the failing schools and send them to the good schools. Then the attendance would increase - while keeping a successful school with successful teachers in place.

Is that rocket science?

These administrators are ???? I say privatize the whole thing, get rid of all the public employees who do nothing and collect a paycheck and reward teachers and schools that perform... oh yeah, and stop keeping open schools just bc they have large attendance when they are FAILING. How sick is it to close schools that are excelling and keeps those that are failing in place? Obsurd.

[aries4118]

Capitol View Elementary was one of the few closings that I was not happy about.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by LovelySummer

Ok, so APS closed Capitol View Elem School last year - which was the highest performing third grade (in terms of test scores Atlanta Public Schools | Contact Information and Links) in all of city of Atlanta -

It's hard to understand the claim that Capitol View was the highest performing third grade in the entire city. Unless I'm reading the data wrong, several other schools (Morningside, Lin, Smith, SPARK, Brandon) are doing a lot better.

As to enrollment, what can you say? Capitol View was down to 257 students, and Beecher Hills had only 307.

Capitol View also got totally hammered in the school cheating scandal. From the final report:

"First, the percentage of flagged classrooms is 70.8% for the 2009 CRCT. There were
only six schools in APS with a higher percentage in 2009.

Second, of the approximately 1,800 non-APS schools in the state taking the 2009 CRCT,
only one school had a higher percentage of flagged classrooms.

Third, with state monitors present in 2010, the percentage of flagged classrooms dropped
from 70.8% to 19%.

Fourth, of the 34 flagged classrooms at Capitol View, 32 (94% of the total) had standard
deviations that exceeded five, and 20 classrooms exceeded ten standard deviations. At five
standard deviations, the probability that the number of erasures occurred without adult
intervention, or cheating, is no better than one in a million. At ten standard deviations, the
probability is no better than one in a trillion. This signifies that the deviations from the state
mean were, for a number of classrooms, a strong indication of cheating on a broad scale at
Capitol View.

Fifth is the individual student wrong-to-right (WTR) erasure analysis. Of the WTR
erasures at Capitol View, 94% were produced by the flagged classrooms which account for
70.8% of the total classrooms in the school."

Etc., etc.

[LovelySummer]

Arjay, no one really knows about whether there was cheating or not (at least I don't). However, I do know someone who taught at Capital View for 15 years and the school has had decent test scores for years...not just after the NCLB when everyone got scared. Do u know that the students who attended Capitol View at the time of the closure were sent to FAILING schools? KNOWN failing schools, not just a suspected failing school. To me, that is absolutely ridiculous. How must the parents have felt?

To me, the goal should be giving the kids the best education. As such, my thinking is, SHUT THE FAILING SCHOOL DOWN and ship those students to Capitol View or Beecher Hills - if attendance is an issue. Don't shut down an IB school (which Beecher Hills is) and ship the students to the mess in their local areas. Currently, Beecher Hills has over 50% out of district students brought to the school by parents that drive. Obviously, the schools in the local areas are a mess or else they wouldn't go through all of that.

I don't understand the thinking of APS - how is sending kids to a school that is the pits from a better school good for them? I say shut down the failing schools and ship the kids in the failing schools to better schools. This works out better for the kids in the failing schools too. That is, if education is the metric that we are using to measure which schools should be closed, which standard of education is obviously and sadly not the measuring stick. The more I learn about APS, the more I lean toward private because the thinking in the public school system in many cases is totally political and a*sbackwards.

[Seatlien]

I don't care to reopen the redistricting wound, nor do I care to defend APS as a model of efficiency and good decision making.

However, I wanted to point out that your source calling CV the best 3rd grade in APS was based on 2009 CRCT scores.

In 2009, CV ranked in the 88th percentile in Georgia.

After the cheating allegations broke, CV dropped to the 14th percentile in 2010.

Something was very wrong at CV.